Minimum Wage Hike Stabs Business Owners in the Heart

Just when businesses need a break, Democrats jammed through a bill that raises the federal minimum wage to $7.25 an hour.

To add insult to injury, the MIT Press published a book earlier this year by David Neumark and William Wascher, which is the first recent, comprehensive overview of the evidence on the economic effects of minimum wages (hat tip: Ed Morrissey). Their conclusion lays waste to the liberal contention that minimum wages help the poor or underemployed.

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.

Just to recap, the Democratic Party's incessant cries for increasing minimum wages:

• reduce employment opportunities
• reduce earnings
• do not reduce poverty
• and have adverse long-term effects on wages and earnings

Just add this ludicrous policy to the Democrat Party's 150-year track record of failure.

Standing on the side of slavery during the Civil War; creating the budget-busting Social Security and Medicare entitlement programs; opposing civil rights legislation; transferring trillions in wealth under the failed "Great Society" programs; undermining Reagan's Peace Through Strength doctrine; crushing the American auto industry with damaging labor laws and outrageous regulations; opposing missile defense; spurning every effort at energy independence; utilizing lawfare to fight terrorism; claiming welfare reform would lead to mass starvation... well, you get the picture.

As Papa B says: When you vote Democrat, you vote for failure.