The Patriot Post® · Minimum Wage Increases Block Economic Ladder

The National Bureau of Economic Research is out with a new paper showing once again that raising the minimum wage has a high cost for workers. In October, Hillary Clinton summed up the Left’s argument that raising the minimum wage is a no-brainer: “[D]on’t let anybody tell you that raising the minimum wage will kill jobs. They always say that.” But what University of California, San Diego, researchers Jeffrey Clemens and Michael Wither found is this: “[B]inding minimum wage increases had significant, negative effects on the employment and income growth of targeted workers. … We also present evidence of the minimum wage’s effects on low-skilled workers’ economic mobility. We find that binding minimum wage increases significantly reduced the likelihood that low-skilled workers rose to what we characterize as lower middle class earnings.” In other words, the minimum wage often has the opposite of the intended effect. No wonder the best argument liberals can come up with is “because we said so.” More…