“McQuery” writes back – in response to this post – with a confession:
I have no idea what you’re talking about with this jibberish [sic]. Sounds like the only science you know is how to excuse yourself from doing true science. [There’s more, but these two sentences convey the gist.]
In that long post I failed to communicate well with “McQuery.” My apologies. So let me try, with a very short post, if not to communicate better, at least to summarize the thrust of that longer post – which is:
Well-established principles of economics assure us that, absent actual conditions of monopsony in the real world, minimum-wage legislation will with sufficient certainty make many low-skilled workers worse off. Our theory – the state of economic principles as these are now widely understood and accepted by most economists – tells us that this fact must be true (although our theory does not tell us whether or not monopsony is real and strong enough in reality to override this empirical conclusion). Our theory tells us that nearly all of the arguments advanced in the popular media and by politicians for minimum-wage legislation are faulty. The happy consequences that those advocates of raising the minimum wage advertise will in fact be smaller than advertised – and these happy consequences will be accompanied by unhappy consequences that the typical minimum-wage proponent ignores.
