It’s not enough that Bloomberg Businesweek‘s Peter Coy labels as “careful research” the widely discredited Card-Krueger study on the impact of a government-mandated minimum wage; Coy also dismisses as “grumpy” those experts who apply real analysis to the issue, rather than feel-good sentimentality.
[J]ust as war is too important to be left to the generals, the minimum wage is too important to be left to the Ph.D.s. Many people view the wage floor as a statement about the worthiness of work itself—a sense that Obama got at in 2013 when he said no one working full-time in the wealthiest nation on earth should have to live in poverty. The declaration rings true to a lot of people, even if a grumpy economist would say, “Well, that all depends on the marginal product of labor.”
One might also say that economic analysis is too important to be left to those ignorant of economics. For a more realistic assessment of the likely outcome of an increase in the government-mandated minimum wage, you might want to check out Roy Cordato’s recent analysis of the topic.
