A minimum wage is a government-mandated wage control that takes negotiating power away from workers and employers. There is a rare near consensus among economists that binding price controls distort economic activity, but politics often gets in the way of seeing the fallacy of a wage control. Setting a minimum wage floor above a market wage results in unemployment, especially for low-skilled workers. It also slows future job creation and pushes unemployed workers who would take a wage at less than a minimum wage into long periods of unemployment and dependency on family or taxpayers.
The debate questions Americans want answered
It’s just a shame the media in control of the debate will be unlikely to focus on the most vital issues. The media have begun their predictable lead-up to the first presidential debate slated for June 27 with the usual question — “Do debates really matter?” — before answering it themselves. As Politico’s Jack Shafer...