From the National Review Online:
We heard many bad and tired ideas during last night’s State of the Union address, and one of them was the promise to raise the minimum wage, to $9 dollar an hour. While on the surface it may seem like a way to increase the standard of living for lower-income Americans, in reality the policy is likely to backfire. For instance, research by economists David Neumark of the University of California, Irvine, William Wascher of the Federal Reserve Board, and Mark Schweitzer of the Cleveland Fed shows that that minimum wages increase poverty and hence poverty reduction certainly shouldn’t be expected as a benefit of raising the minimum wage. That’s because, contrary to common belief, the relationship between low wages and poverty is extremely weak. In fact, as Neumark writes in a 2009 piece in the Wall Street Journal, “The principal sources of an individual’s higher earnings are more schooling and the accumulation of experience and skills in the labor market,” both of which are discouraged by increases in the minimum wage.

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