In a move to create a “living wage,” San Francisco recently decided to raise its minimum wage to $8.50, a pay hike that also affects waitresses and waiters. Other major cities have made similar strides in boosting minimum wages. However, a report by the Reason Foundation argues that these policies just end up hurting the people they are meant to protect – workers.
Small businesses, particularly restaurants, have been hard hit. The report says:
Unfortunately, the study remarks, the proponents of these minimum wage hikes cite the same discredited study of Card-Krueger which had found, based on skewed and false data, that minimum wage laws have no ill-effects on low-skill employment.
Source: Tim Cavanaugh, Sin of Wages, Reason Foundation, February 2004.
For text http://www.reason.com/0402/ci.tc.sin.shtml
For more on Minimum Wage http://www.ncpa.org/iss/min/
FMF Policy Bulletin\2 March 2004
