The Concise Guide to the Minimum Wage

by Jim Cox
 

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Introduction

  1. What's the Effect of the Law?
  2. Why Not Raise It Even Higher?
  3. "People Have to Have a Livable Wage"
  4. On-the-Job Training
  5. "How Could Anyone's Labor Be Valued at Less Than the Minimum Wage?"
  6. Minimum Wage is Actually Higher than $5.15
  7. "It's Easy for the Middle Class to Call for Abolishing the Minimum Wage"
  8. Organized Labor
  9. Impact on Young, Minorities
  10. Fixed Number of Jobs?
  11. Racism
  12. Supra-Marginal Firms
  13. The Sub-Minimum Wage Law
  14. 300,000 vs. 600,000 Jobs Lost
  15. Crime
  16. Mandated Wages, Not Mandated Jobs
  17. "Businesses Can Afford It"
  18. The Card-Krueger Study
  19. The Monopsony Model
  20. Current Pay in the Market
  21. What is the Source of Wages?
  22. Individual Freedom

References

About the Author

15. Crime

By destroying job opportunities the minimum wage law encourages criminal behavior. If the mainstream method of generating an income -- working -- is foreclosed to an individual by pricing him out of the job market then the alternate method -- crime -- becomes more appealing. Individuals do not typically make the transition from honest, law-abiding citizen to career criminal in one moment's decision. The criminal life comes in small steps; the effect of the minimum wage law with its job-destroying traits is to encourage those small steps toward a life of crime.

 
 

The Concise Guide to the Minimum Wage © 2003 Jim Cox