I confess that I’m little-persuaded by Card and Krueger’s research, because it suffers from what I think is a serious flaw. Though they carried out their first-wave survey a few weeks before the minimum wage increase, the New Jersey law mandating the increase was enacted back in early 1990. That is, the fast-food chains had two years to prepare for the policy change. Employers typically don’t like to fire workers, so a rational strategy to prepare for the policy change would have been to reduce employment through attrition in anticipation of the policy change, rather than issue morale-crushing pink slips on March 31, 1992. Indeed, Card and Krueger’s first-wave survey data show the Pennsylvania restaurants averaged 23.3 full-time-equivalent employees while the New Jersey restaurants averaged 20.4.
Mike Munger summarizes capitalism with three principles.
“Auditing The Empire” – a new blog – looks as though it has much promise. (HT Walter Grinder)
Max Gulker explains that no economic system is perfect.
Here’s Shikha Dalmia on the current political dust-up over sanctuary cities.
Ben Zycher demolishes the Green New Deal.
