Ben Powell, writing in the Huffington Post, gets it. Ben concludes that
Basic economic theory, advanced empirical research, and common sense, all lead to the same conclusion: minimum wage mandates hurt the very people they are intended to help. Unfortunately, good economics doesn’t always coincide with good politics. So economists are doomed to endlessly fight this same battle over and over again, each time a politician finds it politically expedient to peddle some minimum wage economic illiteracy.
Gary Becker gets it. A slice:
Some of the more recent studies have supported the Card-Krueger finding of little if any effects of “moderately” higher minimum wages on employment, although the “majority” has tended to confirm the older conclusion that a 10% increase in the minimum wage reduces teenage employment by about 1 to 3 per cent. A very recent study by Neumark, Salas, and Wascher (January 2013] goes over a few recent studies challenging this conclusion. They conclude, as Neumark and Wascher did in their 2008 book, Minimum Wages, regarding earlier evidence, that the recent evidence does not overturn the conclusion that higher minimum wages do significantly reduce employment of vulnerable groups, like teenagers.
France has one of the highest minimum wages relative to average wages in the developed world, so its record is particularly interesting to analyze. Several studies by the French economists Guy Laroque and Bernard Salanie support the view that higher minimum wages significantly reduce employment of married women and young persons. Consistent with their analysis, France has the highest minimum in Europe, and also has unusually high unemployment rates of younger persons, especially Moslem males.
