As a business owner, I am totally against a nationally mandated minimum wage, because I know that it unfairly raises business expenses while not having a similar effect on business revenue.
It seems I am not alone in this sentiment, David Neumark, a Professor of Economics at the University of California, Irvine and William L. Wascher , an Associate Director in the Division of Research and Statistics at the Federal Reserve Board wrote a book titled Minmum Wages a summary:
In this book, David Neumark and William Wascher offer a comprehensive overview of the evidence on the economic effects of minimum wages. Synthesizing nearly two decades of their own research and reviewing other research that touches on the same questions, Neumark and Wascher discuss the effects of minimum wages on employment and hours, the acquisition of skills, the wage and income distributions, longer-term labor market outcomes, prices, and the aggregate economy. Arguing that the usual focus on employment effects is too limiting, they present a broader, empirically based inquiry that will better inform policymakers about the costs and benefits of the minimum wage.
Based on their comprehensive reading of the evidence, Neumark and Wascher argue that minimum wages do not achieve the main goals set forth by their supporters. They reduce employment opportunities for less-skilled workers and tend to reduce their earnings; they are not an effective means of reducing poverty; and they appear to have adverse longer-term effects on wages and earnings, in part by reducing the acquisition of human capital. The authors argue that policymakers should instead look for other tools to raise the wages of low-skill workers and to provide poor families with an acceptable standard of living.
I shall get around to picking up a copy, you might want to do the same thing too…
Posted by PUMA Pundit
