The Atlantic | The Economic Experiment That Upended Reality by Nick Hanauer

AI generated summary, Read the full article for complete information.

The article argues that the long‑standing neoliberal belief that raising the minimum wage inevitably destroys jobs has been decisively disproved by real‑world experiments, beginning with Seattle’s 2014 $15 wage and followed by similar hikes across both liberal and red states as well as in Europe, all of which showed stable or even expanding employment, modest price effects, and increased consumer spending that boosted the broader economy. This evidence reveals a deeper flaw in the neoliberal paradigm, which treats markets as perfectly competitive mechanisms that must sacrifice fairness for growth, ignores the cooperative, socially‑driven nature of human behavior, and falsely attributes rising inequality to merit rather than market power. The authors propose a new “market humanism” framework that views economies as evolving ecologies where fairness enhances efficiency, suggesting that policies such as higher wages, progressive taxation, antitrust enforcement, and public investment can simultaneously promote equity and robust economic growth.

Read more: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/05/minimum-wage-experiment-worked/687255/?utm_source=feed

#NickHanauer #EricBeinhocker #ArindrajitDube #Seattle #Germany

NPR Topics: News | The hidden power keeping wages low by Greg Rosalsky

AI generated summary, Read the full article for complete information.

The article explains how “monopsony” – the buyer‑side counterpart of monopoly – underlies low wages in today’s economy. Originating with Joan Robinson’s 1930s coinage of the term, the concept was long ignored by mainstream economics, which assumed perfectly competitive labor markets where employers had little wage‑setting power. New research, highlighted in Arindrajit Dube’s book *The Wage Standard*, shows that monopsony power is actually widespread, driven by market concentration, search frictions, and job differentiation, and that it allows employers to suppress pay, contributing to rising income inequality. The piece discusses how this insight has reshaped thinking about minimum‑wage policies, cites the work of David Card and Alan Krueger in overturning the notion that higher wages cause job loss, and outlines policy ideas – such as stronger collective bargaining, sector‑wide wage standards, and higher minimum wages – intended to curb employer power and raise workers’ wages.

Read more: https://www.npr.org/sections/planet-money/2026/04/21/g-s1-118071/the-hidden-power-keeping-wages-low

#JoanRobinson #ArindrajitDube #Fightfor$15 #US

AI generated summary, Read the full article for complete information.