Perhaps the greatest example that good policymaking intentions go awry is the minimum wage. Proponents of increasing the minimum wage argue that doing so will help the poor.
If we could snap our fingers and make the poor suddenly rich, there would be no reason to object. Unfortunately, in a world of scarce resources, this is not a possibility. The minimum wage actually tends to make many poor workers worse off and increases unemployment. A recent study on California minimum wage increases demonstrates that fact (yet again).
Professors Jeffrey Clemens, Jonathan Meer, and Olivia Edwards recently put out a working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) that demonstrates some adverse effects of minimum wage laws.
The paper covers California’s 2023 law, which enacted a $20 minimum wage for restaurants that had at least 60 locations in the US. This was a significant increase from the fast food minimum wage for California, which had been $16 (though some localities had higher minimum wages). They examine the impact of the law on employment and find:
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