Jane wonders how I ever divined an inverse correlation between the minimum wage and high employment. The answer is easy: I didn't. And if she'd read the post, she'd know that. Indeed, the only mention of correlation was a specific denial that there was any. "Any attempt to correlate minimum wage increases with joblessness falls on its face."
Of course, a thousand folks on the right took that to mean I was correlating the minimum wage with strong job markets, which was also not the case. The point of the post, which accurately reflects the economic consensus, is that reasonable increases in the wage have a minimal or nonexistent effect on jobs. Indeed, the evidence suggests that full employment can be reached and state economies can flourish in the direct aftermath of wage increases. Thus, since all else is likely equal, we should raise the wage, now at its lowest point in 50 years. It was, I figured, a pretty basic point. But a couple weeks have passed and my libertarian friends have thrashed so many straw men that horses could feed here. Whatever makes folks happy, I guess.
