Of course, most workers will not be affected, because they were already earning more than the new legal minimum. Workers whose productivity is very low will be affected. No study can overturn this economic logic. A follow-up investigation by David Neumark and William Wascher for the National Bureau of Economic Research showed that Card and Krueger collected data incorrectly. Polls showing that a large majority of the public favors raising the minimum wage only confirm rampant economic ignorance.
Politicians rely on the public's ignorance.
Some have resorted to demagoguery by comparing the earnings of minimum-wage workers with those of corporate CEOs. He does not mention that 57 percent of minimum-wage workers are single individuals, many of them teenagers or college students living with parents. A group of 101 economists, led by such left-liberal luminaries as Lawrence Klein, James Tobin, and Kenneth Arrow, recently issued a statement supporting the proposed increase of the minimum wage and declaring that the effect on employment would be insignificant. Some economists are always willing to sell their scientific souls for a mess of partisan political pottage. Of course, because total employment tends to grow and because inflation diminishes the real value of a fixed minimum wage, a moderate increase of the minimum wage does not prompt employers to fire millions of workers.