Shut Up, I Explained

On January 8th, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops sent a letter to the United States Congress saying, "The current federal minimum wagefalls short of this standard for its failure to provide sufficient resources for individuals to form and support families.A full-year, full-time worker making the minimum wage does not make enough money to raise a child free from poverty.Because the minimum wage is a static number and does not change, each year it becomes more difficult for workers making the minimum wage to survive.Additionally,while some minimum wage workers are teenagers,research suggests as much as 25 percent of workers who would benefit from a minimum wage increase are parents.Workers deserve a just wage that allows them to live in dignity, form and support families, and contribute to the common good." 

They preface their remarks with "We write not as economists or labor market experts,..."


Let's see what actual experts have to say....

David Neumark, Economics professor at UC-Irvine and Wlilliam Wascher, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (Division of Research and Development) have done a little reseearch on the subject. Here's what they say:
"First, we see very few – if any – studies that provide convincing evidence of positive employment effects of minimum wages, especially from those studies that focus on the broader groups (rather than a narrow industry) for which the competitive model generally predicts disemployment effects. Second, the studies that focus on the least-skilled groups that are likely most directly affected by minimum wage increases provide relatively overwhelming evidence of stronger disemployment effects for these groups."