The whole thing is worth reading ... here is the conclusion:
I think it is true that the more honest case for the minimum wage is coming from proponents who are biting the bullet and arguing that the optimal minimum wage would be one that increases unemployment a little. I for one am not sure that hurting the worst off among the low-skilled to benefit the slightly better off is good policy. I think there are high costs to pushing people out of the bottom of the labor market by removing the lowest ladder rung. I also think reasonable people can disagree about this so long as we are talking about modest changes in the minimum wage.
Lots of great analysis of what to do and not to do - from a very smart economist. An excerpt:
My morning routine, when not pregnant, is to have a cup of coffee before breakfast on an empty stomach. Early in my pregnancy, this idea was, frankly, revolting. After talking with other women, it sounds like this is fairly typical.
We know that nausea is a sign of a healthy pregnancy, but (as in my case) it also causes women to avoid coffee. This means that the pregnant women who drink a lot of coffee also are more likely to be the ones who aren't experiencing nausea. So here we may well be mistaking a correlation for an underlying cause: The women who drink less coffee have fewer problems not because they limit their caffeine intake but because they tend to suffer from nausea, which inhibits coffee drinking.
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