Afternoon Must-Read: Jared Bernstein: The U.K. vs. the U.S. Minimum-Wage Debate

…in blocking an increase in the minimum, at least at a national level. House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) consistently rails against the policy as a ‘job killer.’ There’s even a whole ‘think tank,’ backed by the fast-food lobby, that exists to oppose minimum-wage increases and refute research like that of Manning…. What is it about our economic debates that often insulates them from facts? Why do views that are known to be wrong or overblown–it’s not that the minimum wage never costs anyone a job, but that the beneficiaries far outweigh the losers–continue to get an equal hearing?… Media outlets and journalists whose job it is to report on these issues do not want to be labeled as biased…. You can blame the news media for this…. But many others don’t have the time or the firepower to figure out who’s right. Money interacts in important ways here, more so here than in the United Kingdom and other advanced economies…. U.K. policymakers have of course shown themselves capable of making bad economic moves based more on ideology than fact…. But at least regarding the minimum wage, policy there has in no small part been driven by facts, compromise, collaboration and acknowledgement that in the face of those facts, a formerly held position was wrong. Why, oh why, does that sound so incredibly out of reach in today’s American politics?