Minimum Wages Have Tradeoffs

Minimum wages help some workers, which is why they are so popular. But they aren’t a free lunch. There are tradeoffs. They aren’t always easy to see, but they exist just the same. My colleague Iain Murray has a piece about those tradeoffs in the Washington Examiner, to which I contributed. As Iain summarizes:

Breaking out of poverty is difficult for many people, and the evidence is that a minimum wage adds to the difficulty. Workers are fired, hours are cut, jobs are not created, non-wage perks, including insurance, free parking, free meals, and vacation days evaporate, annual bonuses shrink, prices rise, (squeezing minimum wage earners themselves), big businesses gain an artificial competitive advantage over their smaller competitors, and crime rates rise. It is a bleak litany.

On the flip side, minimum wages do give some workers a raise. Are the tradeoffs that others have to endure worth it? Read the whole thing here (or here for a facsimile of the print edition, starting at p. 24).