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

16. Mandated Wages, Not Mandated Jobs

One major point which minimum wage advocates fail to consider is that the minimum wage law mandates wage levels only. The minimum wage law does not mandate that anyone actually get a job at that higher wage. Clearly, it does low-skilled job prospects little good to have a higher wage if in the process they end up with no jobs at which to be earning that wage.

 
 

The Concise Guide to the Minimum Wage © 2003 Jim Cox