...one of the best ways to get a high-paying job is to get a low-paying job and work your way up. The minimum wage can put the least employable out of work and have permanent negative effects when training and work skills not acquired in youth are difficult to accumulate later on.Democrats and unions seem to worry more about trying to help adult minimum wage workers, who are a minority, right? And if one tries to oppose such counterproductive help, the left seems to think one is not being kind enough. It's the feeling that counts, not the numbers.
...teenagers who grow up in states with a minimum wage that is significantly and consistently higher than the federal minimum have lower earnings and work less a decade or more later when those workers are in their late twenties. The negative effects are larger for blacks, for whom the minimum wage tends to be more binding.
Alex Tabarrok also links to Robert Musil's discussion of a New York Times' front page weeper full of meaningless numbers and touching anecdotes:
..a New York Times survey comprising scores of detailed interviews exploring the families' [of September 11 World Trade Center victims] emotional, physical and spiritual status. That survey found lives colored by continuing pain. Almost half still have a hard time getting a good night's sleep. A few said they no longer flew on airplanes. About a third have changed jobs or quit. About one in five have moved since 2001, and a fifth of those who still live where they did on Sept. 11 would move if they could. Very few who lost a spouse have remarried.Musil provides a lesson in statistical thinking.
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