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

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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

"... growth is generated by those in the broad middle of the income distribution, from the 10th to the 90th deciles.

They do the bulk of the working, saving, consuming and innovating in the economy, and if their finances are healthy, the economy will grow and be healthy too. Put another way, a robust economy of thriving middle-income families is not a consequence of economic growth, it is its *cause*."

#EricBeinhocker, #NickHanauer, 2022

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/sep/25/forget-trickle-down-what-the-uk-needs-is-middle-out-economics

#economics #TrickleDown