Why I can’t be both an economist and a liberal

In today's America, I can't be both an economist and a liberal.

Economists should be bound ​by ​facts and reason. And I can't do that and embrace liberal positions on the minimum wage, climate change and gender discrimination.

Raising prices for most anything reduces purchases. Simply put, if beef or a plumbers’ visit gets too high, folks start to eat more chicken and fix their own faucets.

Economists should be bound ​by ​facts and reason. And I can't do that and embrace liberal positions on the minimum wage, climate change and gender discrimination.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, as President Obama proposes, would eliminate 500,000 to 1,000,000 jobs. Businesses will be forced to raise prices, lose customers and lay off employees. Fast food restaurants will begin to use more machines and we'll see something similar to automated checkout devices at drug stores and supermarkets.

Past increases in the federal minimum wage did not have large impacts on employment, because those were in line with inflation, and businesses adopted strategies expecting such periodic adjustments. The minimum wage was last reset in 2009 and we knew that raising it one dollar to $8.25 to preserve purchasing power would not cost many jobs.

Jumping it up to $10.10 an hour, however, would fundamentally redefine the tradeoffs businesses face regarding unskilled labor and automation. The workers left standing would have more spending power but overall, increasing unemployment by at least 500,000 would take a bite out of GDP and growth from an already anemic economic recovery

Economists, fancying themselves liberal and advocates of the working poor, deny the lessons of hundreds of years of economic theory and history. Most act out of expediency to win favor with the media and powerful politicians.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/06/27/why-cant-be-both-economist-and-liberal/?cmpid=cmty_plus_fn