Minimum Wage

Billy Binion | From the December 2024 issue

The idea that the federal minimum wage should exist in some form may sound beyond debate to most Americans, the vast majority of whom have not lived in a time when it wasn't a political reality. The debate is arguably settled, but maybe not in the way most think.

"There's a virtual consensus among economists that the minimum wage is an idea whose time has passed," wrote a prominent newspaper's editorial board a few years back. "Raising the minimum wage by a substantial amount would price working poor people out of the job market….If a higher minimum means fewer jobs, why does it remain on the agenda of some liberals?"

It's a good question, which The New York Times posed to its readers in January 1987. "The right minimum wage," the paper's editorial board wrote, is "$0.00."

The editorial board has since changed its position. The basic economics, however, have not changed.

Those basics are sometimes difficult to suss out in a conversation riddled with partisanship. That's because they're nuanced—something the Times credibly........

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