The CBO's minimum wage paradox. (well, not quite)

The news is presenting the CBO's report incorrectly.

The range of job loss / gain from a $10.10 minimum wage, under one standard deviation, is ~1M, while that one standard deviation range for a $9.00 minimum wage is ~200,000.

So allow me to point to what I'm referring, for the moment in this post, as the Minimum Wage Paradox:

Zero changes to the federal minimum wage is the baseline.  But under a smaller increase ( from $7.25 to $9.00) in the minimum wage, there is a good (relatively speaking) statistical probability of an increase in jobs, but under a higher increase (from $7.25 to $10.10) in the minimum wage, there is very little probability of an increase of jobs.  If you increase the minimum wage just a little, it could increase employment, but if you increase it too much, you will likely lose jobs.

Of course, that's not really what the CBO report is demonstrating.  What appears to be a Minimum Wage Paradox, is a way of showing that the bigger the increase in the minimum wage, the less certain the CBO is on what the effects on employment will be.

The point here is that the news has grabbed onto this story, reported it incorrectly, then assigned it a very high value of certainty that it did not deserve.

I personally do not believe that the CBO report is exactly right, and here's why.

If you've paid attention to my prior posts about my belief of normative trends, doesn't an increase in the nominal + real (inflation adjusted, under the $10.10 option) wages actually just reflect an adjustment in non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment?

Now, let's look at 2016 in a microeconomic view.

Let's say it's 2016 and the economy continues to grow with the unemployment rate dropping and the labor participation rate increasing.  Are you still paying $7.25 -- the minimum wage set back in 2009 -- even as we're reaching full employment and it's getting near impossible to find good employees?  Or are you increasing your wages to attract better talent?  So, in reality minimum wages will increase anyway, in 2016, it's just a question of whether or not you're increasing prices.

Furthermore, the more people moved out of poverty means less upward pressure on taxes (or conversely, greater pressure to make cuts on social safety net programs, as the needs decrease).  Aren't those two everlasting hallmarks of conservative dogma?

I call it a win-win.