If Black Lives Matter, Repeal the Minimum Wage

The civil unrest following last week's police shootings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota, followed by the sniper attack on police officers in Dallas, has sparked a new bout of public concern over the hardships of Black America. Those hardships include significantly higher violent crime victimization, higher joblessness, higher poverty, and lower income than the general U.S. population.

Previous moments of such concern have prompted politicians to respond with the standard, tired slate of policies that supposedly would "empower" and "lift" African Americans. All too often, those policies mainly empowered government employees and vendors, while the gap between Black America and the rest of the country remains. By the time the policy failures became obvious, public and political interest had waned, and little else happened until new headlines brought new concern.

Perhaps this time will be different, and policymakers will try some different ideas that might actually help. Cato offers many recommendations for reforming education, criminal justice, and the social safety net that would especially help black Americans.

To those, add this simple, seemingly counterintuitive recommendation: repeal the minimum wage.

Though some politicians deny it, the link between the minimum wage and unemployment is well established; denying that empirical research is akin to denying the research on climate change. Among the findings is that the minimum wage's detrimental effects fall hardest on young black males: the same group that suffers some of the worst hardships of Black America. Perhaps if they had greater opportunities to take starter jobs that would give them both income and the work experience that leads to better-paying jobs, they'd have a better chance to escape violence and poverty. (Meanwhile, far too many young African American males are pushed into the black market, where they earn sub-minimum wages for dangerous work.) Indeed, the empirical work suggests that there's a direct causal relationship between the minimum wage and crime.

Repealing the minimum wage for the sake of black youth would be a great piece of historical closure. The minimum wage was established, in part, to push blacks and women out of jobs that progressives believed should go to white family men. The economic struggles of African Americans today reflect, in part, how well the progressives' plan worked.