Tyler Cowen wonders about the consistency of some economists who support modest increases in the legislated minimum-wage. Such support does indeed appear to be inconsistent with Keynesian theorizing about sticky wages. (Here’s the gist: If, as many minimum-wage proponents insist, a government-mandated higher minimum-wage will prompt significant numbers of employers to re-arrange work patterns and opportunities so as to extract more output per hour from each low-wage worker, why will not employers do the very same in response to workers who, because wages are sticky downward, refuse to lower their wage demands?)
About at least some of those “provisos” that Bob highlights in his post, here’s Mark Perry.
Mark Perry weighs in also here. (Oh, and Mark also shares with us this oldie-but-goodie worth-a-thousand-words cartoon from Henry Payne.)
And even more from Mark Perry (and Socrates).
Finally from Mark, here’s some empirical evidence on the consequences of the minimum-wage.
Milton Friedman, in this three-and-a-half-minute long video, exposes the political reality fueling the legislated minimum-wage. (Starting around the 1:50 mark, Friedman says “The minimum-wage law is most properly described as a law saying ‘Employers must discriminate against people who have low skills.'”)
