The Minimum Wage Revisited

Who is helped and who is hurt by the minimum wage? Here's one answer from the Emirates Economist:

As I was relating to my students just the other day, the unintended consequence of the minimum wage in the U.S. is that it enriches white middle class families with working teenagers and further impoverishes working class black families. When you show students the unintended consequences of the minimum wage I've noticed that in South Carolina and in the United Arab Emirates there are some students who will ask this question in class: "Say what? You said the purpose of the minimum wage law was to benefit the poor. Why are you teaching us about something that shows the opposite effect?" Though they feel confused, such a student has learned a lot in 50 minutes.

Relate that to the following statistic, cited in that same piece:

It's not exactly macroeconomics, but PowerLine takes note that the "The Employment Policies Institute has calculated the average family income of employees who would benefit from an increase in the minimum wage based on Census Bureau Data (click here). According to the EPI breakdown (based on 2003 data), the average family income of Minnesota's destitute minimum wage workers is...$57,421."

Read that again: $57,421.

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