Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed

by Jason L. Riley

Minimum-wage defenders don’t have much in the way of hard data to refute the disemployment effects of these policies. Instead, they argue that minimum-wage laws alleviate poverty, which is the greater good, in their view. Here’s how Obama put it in his 2013 State of the Union address: We know our economy is stronger when we reward an honest day’s work with honest wages. But today, a full-time worker making the minimum wage earns $14,500 a year. Even with the tax relief we put in place, a family with two kids that earns the minimum wage still lives below the poverty line. That’s wrong. That’s why, since the last time this Congress raised the minimum wage, nineteen states have chosen to bump theirs even higher. Tonight, let’s declare that in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty, and raise the federal minimum wage to $9.00 an hour. . . . This single step would raise the incomes of millions of working families. It could mean the difference between groceries or the food bank; rent or eviction; scraping by or finally getting ahead. For businesses across the country, it would mean customers with more money in their pockets. The belief that minimum-wage laws are an effective antipoverty tool has a long pedigree on the political left. “Without question,” said President Roosevelt in 1938 after Congress passed the federal minimum, “it starts us toward a better standard of living and increases purchasing power to buy the products of...