printMinimum-wage legislation fixes the price of labor above its productivity, making it less likely that the young and the unskilled will be hired. Those who claim to represent the interests of unemployed youngsters—whose labor-participation rate has been in decline—and other unskilled laborers don’t much care that such legislation circumvents voluntary exchanges in the marketplace. Because government has fixed the price of labor, economic actors are prevented from engaging in mutually beneficial, voluntary exchange.
Still less is the hike justified because it impoverishes. Government can set wages above market value (productivity), but it cannot compel business to hire (and lose money), the outcome of which is unemployment among the young and the poor.
USA Today reports that “13 states are raising pay for minimum-wage workers at the start of 2014.” Another site more savvy than the Seattle Times—almost any website on the WWW qualifies—pegs the additional labor costs to the City of Seattle of “a $15 minimum wage” at “nearly $700,000.
Get rid of the minimum wage altogether says Prof. Walter Block, and jail those who pass it for the crime of “pulverizing the poor.”