We Don't Know the Effects of Minimum Wage Increase
"Striking Workers, Brixton Ritzy" by M.o.B. 68 CC BY-SA 2.0 And the more I learn about his topic, the more I regard with suspicion those who seem to be quite sure about it. Economist Thomas Sowell once quipped that "there are no solutions; there are only trade-offs." It's a brilliant line and rings true in a wide variety of contexts. One of the contexts in which Sowell and many other economists apply this truth is the debate around minimum wage laws. The common wisdom is that whatever economic gains we get from minimum wage laws, they are more than offset by job loss. Sowell again: Unfortunately, the real minimum wage is always zero, regardless of the laws, and that is the wage that many workers receive in the wake of the creation or escalation of a government-mandated minimum wage, because they lose their jobs or fail to find jobs when they enter the labor force. Making it illegal to pay less than a given amount does not make a worker’s p
