Ah, I remember the good old days when I was having long minimum wage arguments with libertarians. Sniff. Go forth, Kathy. Go forth and graph! Eventually, I exited stage left from this particular debate because it got a little absurd. The lay of the land on the minimum wage is this: The evidence is ambiguous on employment dislocation, with some studies showing a slight loss in jobs, lots of studies showing no measurable impact, and a couple showing an increase in employment. Meanwhile, the evidence is clear that low wage workers enjoy higher salaries. We have passed increases in the minimum wage a fair number of times in our history, and have never -- seriously, never -- seen mass layoffs or economic chaos result. Then we start on the minimum wage merry-go-round. It only effects kids, say opponents. It's never made clear why teenagers should make crap wages, and in any case, it's not true. 71% of the 1996-97 minimum wage increase accrued to adults. If you're really interested in this, here's an analysis of census data that examines the distributional effects of a hypothetical increase to $7.25. 80% goes to folks over 20.
