Minimum Wage
The minimum wage is a critical social economic safeguard, setting a wage floor that should allow workers to meet their basic needs. The national minimum wage was first instituted in 1938 as a central feature of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The Act also established overtime and child labor standards. It has been amended many times to increase the wage or expand coverage. Workers in some industries, such as agriculture, are exempt. The minimum wage is set by Congress, not by an independent agency as President Franklin Roosevelt originally proposed. It is not pegged to the cost of living and the real value of the federal minimum wage lags behind inflation. As a result, many states and cities have set their minimum wage rates higher than the federally mandated wage.
Commentary
Cry Wolf Quotes
The minimum wage has caused more misery and unemployment than anything since the Great Depression.
[The Fair Labor Standards Act] would create chaos in business never yet known to us.... It sets an all-time high in crackpot legislation. Let me make it very clear that I am not opposed to the social theory.... No decent American citizen can take exception to this attitude. What I do take exception to is any approach to a solution of this problem which is utterly impractical and in operation would be much more destructive than constructive to the very purposes which it is designed to serve.
The proposal is couched in the soothing and smarmy rhetoric of leftist populism….But if that's all it takes, why stop there? If a simple legislative act increasing the minimum wage to $7.75 is all that is needed to improve the lot of the working poor by just a little, then why not raise it to $10 an hour and get them to the poverty level? For that matter, why not raise it to $50 an hour, assuring every working Californian a comfortable living?
The truth is that if your labor is worth $6.75 an hour and the minimum wage is raised to $7.75, you simply become unemployable. The first rung of the ladder is gone, and there's no place to start….This legislation is the ultimate expression of the cruelest of all human lies: ‘I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.'
Related Laws and Rules
Evidence
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States with Minimum Wages above the Federal Level have had Faster Small Business and Retail Job Growth
The authors decisively disprove the argument that the minimum wage takes a particularly cruel toll on small businesses, which frequently employ low-wage workers (and operate on thin profit margins).
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The Wage and Employment Impact of Minimum-Wage Laws in Three Cities
The Economic Policy Research analyzes the effects of minimum wage increases in Santa Fe, San Francisco and Washington D.C., in comparison with their surrounding suburbs and nearby urban centers that didn’t experience similar wage hikes.
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The Minimum Wage Merry-Go-Round
Ezra Klein neatly dismantles the usual conservative arguments against the minimum wage.
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Making Work Pay: The Impact of the 1996-97 Minimum Wage Increase
The Economic Policy Institute study shows that the Clinton-era minimum wage increases mostly supported the wages of low-income adults.
Backgrounders & Briefs
Good Rules: Ten Stories Of Successful Regulation
Demos looks at ten laws and rules that we take for granted.
Minimum Wage Policy Brief
By Professor Stephanie Luce
The idea of minimum wage laws has been around for more than a century. They are still a good idea.
Resources
Raise the Minimum Wage is a project of the National Employment Law Project. The effort is devoted to preserving the wage floor by raising the federal minimum wage.
University of California-Berkeley Labor Center carries out research on labor and workplace-related issues.
The National Employment Law Project is an organization that promotes economically just public policy in the face of the prevailing trends of the law several decades.
