Minimum wage in the United States

December 20, 2016

What you should know about wage subsidies

Note: This is post #14 in a weekly video series on basic microeconomics. What’s the difference between a wage subsidy and a minimum wage? What is the cost of a wage subsidy to taxpayers? Continue Reading...

April 07, 2016

Minimum Wage Advocates: ‘Sure a $15 Wage Will Increase Unemployment. So What?’

In almost every long-term clash over a cultural or political policy, there comes a point that I’d call the “comfort-level concession.” If the agenda of one side has been won — or has at least moved sufficiently toward achieving victory — the winning side often feels comfortable making concessions about claims that they may have previously denied. Continue Reading...

March 30, 2016

10 Things You Should Know About the Minimum Wage Debate

Since 1938, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt introduced the first federal minimum wage in the U.S., a debate has raged about whether wage floors help or hurt workers. But thanks to a radical economic experiment in California, we may be only a few years away from having a definitive answer. Continue Reading...

January 04, 2016

Why Minimum Wages Increases Don’t Target Poverty

If you ask most people why they support raising the minimum wage they’ll says it’s because it helps the poor. But as David Neumark, a scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco notes, numerous studies have shown that there is no statistically significant relationship between raising the minimum wage and reducing poverty. Continue Reading...

December 29, 2015

Why Does the New York Times Want to Hurt the Poor?

While it may be difficult to imagine, there was once an era when the New York Times was concerned about the poor. Consider, for example, a 1987 editorial they ran with the headline, “The Right Minimum Wage: $0.00.” Continue Reading...

February 20, 2014

Samuel Gregg: ‘Our Minimum-Wage Circus’

Acton’s Director of Research, Samuel Gregg, recently wrote about the effects of raising the minimum wage at the National Review Online. The latest CBO report estimates that increasing the minimum wage to over $10/hour in 2016 will not greatly affect the poorest in society; it is estimated that this increase will only help 2% of those living in poverty. Continue Reading...

January 14, 2014

Raising the minimum wage would help the poor, right?

have been calling for a raise in the minimum wage, and politicians are touting it. There’s even a website devoted to it (“Rebuilding an economy that works for all of us.”) Continue Reading...