That a higher minimum wage can actually lower incomes is one of those things intensely debated. Absolutely every economist will agree that this can be true at some level of that minimum wage. If you make the minimum wage $100 an hour, you’re going to see an awful lot of people earning absolutely nothing through having no job at all. There are perhaps a few (Nick Hanauer comes to mind) who think that this is nonsense.

The debate then becomes, well, at what wage does this become true? The argument then becomes intensely political, those to the Left of us arguing that it would take a much higher minimum wage to put people out of work, while those to the Right insist the minimum wage is already too high and is putting people out of a job. I am to the right of this point, despite the use of “us” there. But we’d all actually like proof.