Monday, August 07, 2006

Minimum Wage and Maximum Wealth, Part 3

Opponents of the minimum wage argue that increases lead to lost jobs for those at the bottom. But this interesting article from Bloomberg News raises questions about the conventional wisdom:
"My thinking on this has changed dramatically,'' says Alan Blinder, a former Federal Reserve vice chairman who teaches economics at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey. "The evidence appears to be against the simple-minded theory that a modest increase in the minimum wage causes substantial job loss.''
Empirical research can enlighten even the most dismal science:
In a Wells Fargo-Gallup poll taken in March, 46 percent of small-business owners said the minimum wage should be increased, and 86 percent said the wage had no effect on them.
"The wage has been left at such a low level for so many years now that inflation has eroded it,'' says Scott Anderson, a senior economist at San Francisco-based Wells Fargo & Co., the fifth-biggest U.S. bank. "It's not as onerous to employers as it once was.''
Here's some more evidence from the

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