The editors of the Washington Post take note of another study finding that a sharp increase of the minimum wage to $15 will harm the very workers it purports to aid:
According to the 146-page report by Philadelphia-based consulting group PFM, the proposed higher wage would indeed yield benefits for low-wage workers who received it, in the form of reduced stress, greater food security and better mental health. Employers, in turn, could benefit from their workers’ improved morale, in the form of higher productivity. However, there would be offsetting costs and they could be substantial: a loss of almost 47,000 jobs and $396.5 million in total income by 2022, due to workers’ being priced out of the job market by the higher minimum wage. This would spell a reduction of nearly $41 million in expected county tax revenue between fiscal 2018 and fiscal 2022; meanwhile, the county government’s payroll costs would go up $10 million.
It will, no doubt, be met by angry retorts and directed research finding the opposite. Left unstated is that there are 300 years of economic reasoning that supports the idea that in general the demand curve for labor slopes down.
However, as Jonathan Swift observed, “Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired.” I don’t expect any study or even actual results will cause its advocates to relinquish their charge for a higher minimum wage.