This should become a topic of a post here sometime next week.

Matt, with all due respect, this isn’t a reasonable interpretation of my position. If I say that government shouldn’t do X to help the poor because X will, in fact, hurt the poor, but instead should do Y, then it’s not reasonable to respond by saying to yourself “huh, I guess he just objects in principle to the government doing anything.”

If a boss can fires employees because he is unable to pay them a more than $5.15/hour, you say it is not employer who suffers. One must wonder what this work was that the boss can do without and not suffer in any way.

Look, BA: if you know (or can easily find out if you lifted a finger to find out) that the minimum wage needed by a guy to provide a minimum level of subsistence to himself is $11.50 an hour, but you pay him $8 an hour, you’re committing an act of injustice.

Having a law in place that sets a floor under wages addresses that injustice, but more generally provides for an atmosphere of fairness and decency in society – “Go ahead and make money, but keep it fair, folks.”

Now, if it turns out that there are unintended consequences, then you find a way to mitigate those consequences – in a way that, again, is consistent with the demands of justice.

It occurs to me that our disagreement is actually ideological and not practical: you seem to object in principle to government “interference” in the activity of business; I see such interference as (maybe unfortunately?) necessary in order to assure that the demands of economic justice are met.
OH! You’re my new favorite blogger fyi

Look, BA: if you know (or can easily find out if you lifted a finger to find out) that the minimum wage needed by a guy to provide a minimum level of subsistence to himself is $11.50 an hour, but you pay him $8 an hour, you’re committing an act of injustice.

Having a law in place that sets a floor under wages addresses that injustice, but more generally provides for an atmosphere of fairness and decency in society – “Go ahead and make money, but keep it fair, folks.”

Now, if it turns out that there are unintended consequences, then you find a way to mitigate those consequences – in a way that, again, is consistent with the demands of justice.

It occurs to me that our disagreement is actually ideological and not practical: you seem to object in principle to government “interference” in the activity of business; I see such interference as (maybe unfortunately?) necessary in order to assure that the demands of economic justice are met.

Whenever you see statistics on the effect of the minimum wage this typically includes the so-called spillover effects for people above the minimum who get a small boost nonetheless because companies want to maintain their wage structure. All the negative effects of the minimum wage are also present for this group, so if a minimum wage was a bad idea without considering spillover effects it will be a bad idea if you consider them. Even counting spillover plus those directly effected you’re still only talking about less than 4% of the workforce, most of whom are teenagers and other second-wage earners.

There are also distortionary effects that come from the minimum wage, as workers are drawn from more productive sectors of the economy to less productive ones. There’s some evidence, for example, that raising the minimum wage can increase the dropout rate for highschool students, as the alternatives to getting your diploma become more attractive.

There are all kinds of ways to mitigate any small harm done to employment levels by a raise in the minimum wage. How about having public works projects?

If this really worked you wouldn’t need a minimum wage, as private businesses would have to raise wages to keep all their workers from signing up for the government. I wouldn’t hold my breath.

If you want workers to be paid more, making them more attractive to employers really ought to be the focus. If you’re going to have the government directly involved, wage supplements (like the EITC) would seem to be preferable to make work projects. In either case, though, the minimum wage will end up being either superfluous or harmful.

If the minimum wage goes up by a quarter, say, then the guy who got a quarter raise from the old minimum wage three months ago can make a good case to his boss that he should get a raise to a quarter over the new minimum.

ANYthing that will empower workers, that will give them more power at the negotiating table, is something that will increase fairness in the current system.

Business, especially BIG business, has too much power in our current economic set-up; the government can be a necessary counter-balance on behalf of workers.