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>The minimum wage can be an effective policy tool for mitigating economic inequality, but public demand for higher minimum wages has not kept up with rising levels of income disparities

They could start the paper by not stating something obviously false.

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Given some of the takes in this comment section so far, this community seems to be proving its point. I imagine almost no one in tech is making minimum wage, so I'm a bit perplexed why we seem to be so split on raising it. Some seem to have fallen for the "prices raise" narrative, as if they didn't raise regardless for the last 1t years.

You can find metastudies on historic minimum wage effects on prices or employment rates, spoiler alert: there is no correlation in sight. Same for rent control. Sadly that doesn't stop people from taking econ 101 and think they can use it to explain everything.

People ham-fisting free market economics is incredibly frustrating. Nobody actually bothers to do step 1: explain how a particular market is a free market.

If they did that, they would be realize that all their conclusions they draw have zero foundation. The labor market is NOT a free market, and that's good. Everyone wants it to not be a free market. But that complicates things, and we can't make 1 million assumptions and draw basic conclusions. We actually have to, you know, analyze things.

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