Minimum wage vs. free markets.(on the right)

NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 22

MS. PELOSI, the new Speaker of the House, has told us that she will call up as maybe the first order of business increasing the minimum wage.

Here are the relevant facts.

The federal minimum wage, enacted in 1938, was last raised in 1997. From that point on, with certain exceptions, you could not lawfully hire someone to work without paying him at least $5.15 per hour. Paying that much would yield $206 per week, or $10,712 per year. A different federal agency defines poverty as annual earnings of $9,827 or less for a single person. The mathematics of the above informs us that the existing federal minimum wage barely keeps a single worker out of poverty.

Of course, many states and localities have enacted higher minimum wages than the federal one. In San Francisco, you need to pay a worker $8.50 an hour; in New York State, $6.75; in Wisconsin, $5.70.

We learn that 60 percent of minimum-wage earners--two-thirds of them women--are working in restaurants and bars; 73 percent, by the way, are white, and 70 percent have high-school diplomas. Nearly 60 percent work part-time.

Now we can leech from these figures several observations: