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Liberals are aggressively trying to debunk a recent study by the University of Washington that found that Seattle's recent move to a $13-an-hour minimum wage had left the city's low-wage workers much worse off.

The study is potentially a major threat to the national movement for a $15 minimum wage, presenting the first significant evidence that such efforts may be doing more harm than good.

Liberals have criticized the report's methodology, arguing that its findings are out of step with past studies on the minimum wage, although increases to Seattle's current level were unprecedented until recently. Mark Long, co-author of the study, shrugged off such criticisms, saying it was to be expected given the groups' politics.

"The [minimum wage] advocates have been critical because our report makes their job harder," Long, a professor with university's Evans School of Public Policy and Governance, told the Washington Examiner. If the study had found results more to the advocates' liking, they wouldn't be complaining about the methodology, he said.

For $15 minimum wage fans, the report released June 26 as a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research was a rude shock. It found that the city's increase to $13 an hour in 2016, up from $9.32 in 2013 and part of a planned phase-in to $15 for most employers by 2018, had sharply reduced wealth among low-wage workers because of job losses and reductions in hours worked. Businesses did both to mitigate the sharp increase in labor costs they faced.

"The lost income associated with the hours reductions exceeds the gain associated with the net wage increase of 3.1 percent.... [W]e compute that the average low-wage employee was paid $1,897 per month. The reduction in hours would cost the average employee $179 per month, while the wage increase would recoup only $54 of this loss, leaving a net loss of $125 per month (6.6 percent), which is sizable for a low-wage worker," the study concluded. It found that payrolls for low-wage workers declined by an average 5.8 percent after the $13 rate went into effect, reducing those workers' income by $120 million.

That was before the final $15-an-hour rate is phased in, suggesting the situation for those workers would get even worse. Liberals have been trying to shoot down the results ever since.

"Don't believe the headlines about a flawed minimum wage study. The Seattle economy is booming," tweeted David Rolf, president of SEIU Local 775 and author of "The Fight for $15," on Monday.

Fight for $15, an activist group funded and run by the Service Employees International Union, argued in a web posting that the study was "not credible" because it was "funded by a hedge fund manager's foundation who made a fortune at Enron." The group did not explain any relevance to the university's findings.

The liberal Center for American Progress posted an article called "Five flaws in a new analysis of Seattle's minimum wage," while the liberal Economic Policy Institute published an even lengthier critique. Liberal economists such as Jared Bernstein weighed in as well.

David Cooper, a fellow at the Economic Policy Institute, said the study was too far out of line with what other minimum wage studies had found. He argued that it didn't matter that no other studies had looked at rates as high as $13 because Seattle's increase wasn't that large relative to its prior level. "Because this was only looking at the increase from $11 to $13 in Seattle it is not outside the scope of what has been studied before," Cooper said. He said a study on the Seattle minimum wage released last week by the University of California, Berkeley, which showed no ill effects from the increase, was more credible because it was in line with earlier studies.

Other critiques noted that the University of Washington study was not peer-reviewed, didn't include data from "multi-site" employers such as chain restaurants, and had some unusual results, such as finding increases in employment for those earning more than $19 an hour.

That's all nonsense, argued Ryan Bourne, an economist with the free-market Cato Institute think tank. The University of Washington study "is one of the only robust papers we have had on this level of the minimum wage in the U.S." The different results from prior studies suggests those reports missed important effects. "The critics have this completely back to front," Bourne said.

Long said the multi-site employers weren't included because their wage and hour data wasn't available. The researchers compensated by conducting a separate survey of those employers. "What we found was that the multi-site employers were more likely to relocate or shift their work capital. That suggests we are, if anything, underestimating the impact" of the $13 rate on employer cutbacks, he said.

It is true that the paper had not been peer-reviewed but it is undergoing the process now, he said. That's why it was released as a working paper through the National Bureau of Economic Research: so the authors could get feedback from fellow economists. Thus far, the reactions from academics and researchers has been highly positive, Long says. The loudest complaints have come from the biggest advocates of a $15 rate.

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Liberals try to refute Seattle minimum wage study - Washington Examiner

Deutsche Welle

India: Liberals rise up against nationalism Deutsche Welle A recent mob attack on a train in India left a 15-year-old Muslim youth dead, presumably for carrying beef. The incident has prompted liberal Indians to brave criticism and raise their voices against so-called cow vigilantes and Hindu nationalists. and more »

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India: Liberals rise up against nationalism - Deutsche Welle

TheSpec.com

Liberals spell out rules on infrastructure cash TheSpec.com OTTAWA Provinces and territories that want a slice of new federal infrastructure money will have to prove it will accelerate economic growth. This is the demand under terms laid out by the Liberals for the government's long-term funding program ... and more »

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Liberals spell out rules on infrastructure cash - TheSpec.com

Liberal and conservative legal experts looking ahead to the next Supreme Court term are preoccupied with much different priorities, but both question whether the high court will decide the fight over President Trump's travel ban.

The issue of whether the travel ban litigation could become moot before the high court hears oral arguments is unresolved, but liberals also appear to be wondering who will be sitting on the high court next term. For liberals, rumors of Justice Anthony Kennedy's potential retirement and role on the high court still dominate their thinking about the future of the Supreme Court.

Erwin Chemerinsky, new dean of Berkeley Law at the University of California, said Thursday that the Supreme Court "is still the Anthony Kennedy court." Speaking at the National Constitution Center's review of the high court's most recent term, Chemerinsky noted that Kennedy "voted in the majority on 97 percent of all of the decisions," more often than any other justice.

"So for the lawyers who're here and watching, if you have a case before the Supreme Court, my advice to you is make your briefs a shameless attempt to pander to Justice Kennedy," Chemerinsky said. "If the clerk of the court will allow it, put Anthony Kennedy's picture on the front of your brief."

While Chemerinsky said he thinks Gorsuch may prove to be more conservative than the late Justice Antonin Scalia, whose seat Gorsuch filled in April, "if Justice Kennedy leaves the court, then we will have the most conservative court there's been since the mid-1930s."

Frederick Lawrence, Yale Law School professor who sat alongside Chemerinsky at the event, said the year has been characterized by "constitutional anxiety" for "constitutional lawyers, constitutional scholars and for citizens who care about the Constitution."

"I certainly will watch with my constitutional anxiety this October in the [travel ban] argument because I think ... there is so much vagueness in play in the joints here that when one finds oneself sort of hoping for mootness as the way out, it tells you the corners we're getting ourselves into," Lawrence said.

At the Heritage Foundation's review of the last term on Thursday, legal experts were similarly questioning whether the high court would resolve the travel ban dispute.

Will Consovoy, a former law clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas and a lawyer who argues before the Supreme Court, said "mootness is a real concern" in the travel ban case. He added that he thought the high court, more so than the lower courts that have reviewed the case, would look to say "can we create a durable rule here that's not going to devour the law, so to speak."

Trump's travel ban blocks nationals from six Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. for 90 days and refugees from all countries for 120 days.

Joseph Palmore, a former law clerk to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and co-chairman of the Appellate and Supreme Court Practice Group at Morrison Foerster, told the Heritage Foundation audience that the issue of mootness is clearly a top issue for the high court.

Asked whether the Supreme Court could hear the case even if it appears to be moot from the vantage point of those outside the justices' chambers, Palmore said that's a question that likely would lurk.

"The court might view it though as what's before us is this actual executive order and if it's moot then those issues could be fought another day, but I think ... there might be a competing urge to the extent that some justices are concerned with what they might see as the overbreadth of some of the court of appeals decisions," Palmore said. "Do they leave those in place because the Supreme Court case becomes moot or do those get vacated? There's a lot of complicated rules, what happens when a case becomes moot."

Palmore said he also is closely watching to see how Trump's campaign statements can be attributed as motivation to enact the travel ban if at all and whether the lower courts appropriately applied nationwide injunctions.

Palmore said the last pressing question is whether the dispute could return to the Supreme Court in the "next few weeks or even days" because of the disagreement over the scope of the injunction. The Supreme Court, in deciding to take the case, said that nationals from the six countries could visit the U.S. if they have "bona fide" relationships in the country.

The fight in the federal courts over the extent of the travel ban permitted by the Supreme Court began earlier this week.

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Liberal, conservative experts question if Supreme Court will hear Trump travel ban case - Washington Examiner

To be a liberal, in this account, is in some sense to be a fake. Its to shroud an ambiguous, even reactionary agenda under a superficial commitment to social justice and moderate, incremental change. American liberalism was once associated with something far more robust, with immoderate presidents and spectacular waves of legislation like Franklin Roosevelts New Deal and Lyndon Johnsons Great Society. Todays liberals stand accused of forsaking the clarity and ambition of even that flawed legacy. To call someone a liberal now, in other words, is often to denounce him or her as having abandoned liberalism.

Liberal-bashing on social media has reached a kind of apogee, but its targets have not yet produced much real defense of the ideology. This means the word liberal is, for the moment, almost entirely one of abuse. It is hard to think of an American politician who has embraced it, even going back two or three generations. If liberalism is dead, then, its a strange sort of demise: Here is an ideology that has many accused sympathizers, but no champions, no defenders.

Americas version of liberalism has always been a curious one. In Europe, the word has traditionally meant a preference for things like limited government, separate private and public spheres, freedom of the press and association, free trade and open markets whats often described as classical liberalism. But the United States had many of those inclinations from the beginning. By the 20th century, American liberalism had come to mean something distinct. The focus on individual liberties was still there, but the vision of government had become stronger, more interventionist ready to regulate markets, bust monopolies and spend its way out of economic downturns. After the end of World War II, this version of liberalism seemed so triumphant in the United States that the critic Lionel Trilling called it the countrys sole intellectual tradition. Its legislation legalized unions and, with Social Security, created a pension system; a health plan for older Americans, Medicare, was on the way.

But as these same liberals initiated anti-Communist interventions in Korea and Vietnam, or counseled patience and moderation to civil rights activists, they quickly found themselves in the same position we see today: under heavy abuse from the left. In a landmark speech at an antiwar rally in April 1965, Paul Potter, the president of Students for a Democratic Society, asked: What kind of system is it that justifies the United States or any country seizing the destinies of the Vietnamese people and using them callously for its own purpose? What kind of system is it that disenfranchises people in the South? The first step, as he saw it, was clear: We must name that system. In a speech later that year, his successor as S.D.S. president, Carl Oglesby, did precisely that, calling it corporate liberalism an unholy alliance of business and the state that was enriching to elites but destructive to working-class Americans and the worlds poor.

It was the 1980 victory of Ronald Reagan and his brand of conservatism that set in motion the villainizing of American liberalism from the right this time not for warmongering but for supposedly being soft on crime and communism, bloating the government with ineffective social programs and turning American universities into hothouses of fetid radicalism. Many demoralized liberals responded by abandoning the label completely. The nasty 1988 presidential campaign may have been a watershed. In one debate, Bush demanded that his opponent, Gov. Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts, explain some of these very liberal positions. Dukakiss reply, a weak Lets stop labeling each other, only confirmed the word as an insult. A few weeks before the election, dozens of distinguished figures from novelists to editors to former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara bought a full-page ad in The Times to print a letter titled A Reaffirmation of Principles, expressing their alarm at the use of liberal as a term of opprobrium. But their own definition of it was oddly vague: They called it the institutional defense of decency. All those attacks on liberalism seemed to be weakening peoples sense of what liberalism even meant.

As the insult gathered steam in the 90s, Bill Clinton was studiously aiming for the political center, ending welfare as we know it and pushing through a tough-on-crime bill. In 2011, Barack Obama made a deal with Republicans to adopt a program of fiscal austerity, prompting the left-wing critic William Greider to declare, in The Nation, the last groaning spasms of New Deal liberalism. Conservatives will fight one another to the death over whos the truer conservative, but the people most accused of being liberal have often seemed as if theyre the ones most ambivalent about actual liberalism.

If liberalism really is Americas core, hegemonic intellectual tradition, its easy to see how it has become the word we use to deride the status quo. For the left, thats a politics in which government cravenly submits to corporate power and cultural debates distract from material needs. For the right, its one in which government continually overreaches and cultural debates are built to punish anyone who isnt politically correct. But in both cases, liberal points to the consensus, the gutless compromise position, the arrogant pseudopolitics, the mealy-mouthed half-truth.

Each side has drawn tremendous energy from opposing this idea of liberalism. At the same time, the space occupied by liberalism itself has shrunk to the point where its difficult to locate. Different strands of it now live on under different names. Conservatives have styled themselves as the new defenders of free speech. Democrats have sidestepped liberal and embraced progressive, a word with its own confusing history, to evoke the good-government, welfare-state inclinations of the New Deal. Some of the strongest defenses of liberalisms achievements come from people who identify as socialists. And free-trade advocates, with no more positive term to shelter under, are now tagged, often derisively, as neoliberal. The various ideas to which liberal has referred persist, in one form or another, among different constituencies. Liberalism may continue. But it may well end up doing so without any actual liberals behind it.

Nikil Saval is an editor at n+1. He last wrote for the magazine about the trend of turning abandoned railways lines into urban parks.

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A version of this article appears in print on July 9, 2017, on Page MM11 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: Off Center.

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Hated by the Right. Mocked by the Left. Who Wants to Be 'Liberal' Anymore? - New York Times