No one likes to argue against the minimum wage. It makes you sound mean, heartless, privileged. You might have all sorts of considered and logical objections — a higher minimum wage means higher unemployment, a bigger black market, more expensive goods, slower growth, and, in any case, the federal government has no business setting private sector salaries — but your opponents won’t engage with those objections. Instead, they will say, “How would you like to work for less than $7.25 an hour?”

President Biden says he favors the plan, long demanded by Democrats in Congress, to raise the minimum wage in stages to $15 an hour. “No one should work 40 hours a week and live in poverty,” he says, a sentiment both unimpeachable and irrelevant.