Peter Sarsgaard as Chuck Lane in the movie Shattered Glass. When they make Bureau of the Corn, I hope to be played by Zac Efron. (Promotional photo.)The real-life version of ex-TNR editor Chuck Lane (as opposed to the Shattered Glass version most of us are more familiar with) seems to have a habit of feuding with liberals. Last month he accused his fellow Washington Post writer Ezra Klein of promoting a “venomous smear” of Joe Lieberman, and a minor blogwar ensued. Now Lane’s getting on liberals’ nerves by hyping a study (also pimped by Fox News) that says the minimum wage kills jobs. The study is by longtime minimum wage opponent, and, as ThinkProgress notes, “almost all of the economic research on the subject shows that the minimum wage has little to no effect on employment,” but Lane doesn’t mention that. (He also doesn’t mention Paul Krugman’s detailed explanation of why reducing minimum wages could be counterproductive during a recession.) Here’s the point, from DougJ at Balloon Juice:
The point here is not that Lane is an asshole for suggesting we lower minimum wage. Nor is to cast aspersion on the work of David Neumark, the economist whose work he cites.
The point here is that Neumark is an economist, who (rightly or wrongly) has made a career of criticizing minimum wage laws (his conclusions, based on my skim, are not simplistic). It’s simply nuts to hold up his work as the consensus of the entire field, especially since critics of Lane’s original article held up a large body of work by various authors who hold different positions on the issue.
I’m going to go to a somewhat unlikely source to try to resolve this dispute: The Economist. Even the libertarians from the other side of the pond acknowledged (paywall), in 2006, that the Democrats’ plan to raise the minimum wage would probably not have significant negative effects on employment. They referred to Lane’s source, Neumark, as “perhaps the leading sceptic about the minimum wage.” But they also offered a suggestion I think a lot of people will be able to get behind:
[A] better tool exists for helping the working poor: the earned-income tax credit (EITC). This tax subsidy, a “negative income tax” that tops up the earnings of the low-paid, was introduced in the 1970s and has been expanded four times since.
Lane should do more to acknowlege that Neumark’s research does not represent the consensus of economists. But there’s room to work towards a resolution here: like The Economist, Lane supports increasing the EITC. That’s great, because while economists do disagree (despite Lane’s protestations) about the economic impact of increasing the minimum wage, they largely agree that increasing and broadening the EITC is a better option. Can’t we all just get along?
Kevin is traveling today.
