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Tyler Cowen wonders about the consistency of some economists who support modest increases in the legislated minimum-wage [2]. 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?)
Bob Murphy has more [3].
About at least some of those “provisos” that Bob highlights in his post, here’s Mark Perry [4].
Mark Perry weighs in also here [5]. (Oh, and Mark also shares with us this oldie-but-goodie worth-a-thousand-words cartoon from Henry Payne [6].)
And even more from Mark Perry (and Socrates) [7].
Finally from Mark, here’s some empirical evidence on the consequences of the minimum-wage [8].
Milton Friedman, in this three-and-a-half-minute long video, exposes the political reality fueling the legislated minimum-wage [9]. (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.'”)