Thursday, May 21, 2015

Minimum wage

The LA Times has been popping corks over the LA City Council's vote to hike the minimum wage. This morning's lead editorial, however, exhorts the Council to also mandate more and better jobs. Why not?

Matt Kahn sees the LA wage hike as an opportunity for a natural experiment. James Pethokoukis notes its a gamble, at best.  But Joel Kotkin points out that the experiment has been running for some time and the findings are not pretty: regulations, mandates and taxes kill growth and jobs -- and worsen inequality along the way. Alex Tabarrok offers a useful visual to (perhaps) chasten the Law of Demand deniers. Don Boudreaux has been hammering this group for some time. Bryan Caplan and Mark Perry cite slow phase-ins as a gadget to mask unemployment downsides of mandated wage hikes.

Central planning is hard work; the "helping people" part is extraordinarily difficult.

ADDED

Megan McCardle