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Bloomberg: Higher Minimum Wage No Longer Seen as Sure-Fire U.S. Job Killer

Clip from the financial news wire:

Prominent economists of all ideological persuasions long believed that raising the U.S. minimum wage would retard job growth, creating unintended hardship for those at the bottom of the ladder.

Today, that consensus is eroding, and a vigorous debate has developed as some argue that boosting the wage would pull millions out of poverty. [...]

``My thinking on this has changed dramatically,’’ says Alan Blinder, a former Federal Reserve vice chairman who teaches economics at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey. ``The evidence appears to be against the simple-minded theory that a modest increase in the minimum wage causes substantial job loss.’’

And studies of states that have raised the minimum wage above the federal level have found no job losses.