Academic Michael Lind thinks he has great insights into public policy. Recently, he wrote a piece purporting to demonstrate that there’s no reason to oppose minimum-wage laws.
Economics professor Donald Boudreaux takes Lind to task here, writing, “First, despite Lind’s insinuation, opposition to the minimum wage isn’t exclusively libertarian; it’s economic. A majority of economic studies continue to find that minimum wages harm many of the low-skilled workers who are ostensibly meant to be helped.”
Yes. Economists have known for a long time that if you artificially raise the cost of hiring workers, some workers just won’t get hired. Employers will make adjustments in the arrangements they have with the workers they retain to offset the imposed cost and leaving those workers little if any better off.
I’d like to add a bit to Boudreaux’s letter by elaborating on the libertarian case against the minimum wage. Such laws use the threat of state coercion against employers, saying, “Either pay these workers more or terminate them. Otherwise, we will punish you.” Libertarians argue that it’s morally wrong for government (or anyone else) to make such threats to peaceful individuals. Perhaps Lind thinks such threats are perfectly proper so long as they come through “democratic” processes, but I don’t. The proper role of government is to minimize coercion and violence, not to engage in it.