The attached study, done by two students at Cornell University, is chock-full of economic formulae and models that are waaaaaaaay beyond me.
But besides the Executive Summary on Page One, the gist of this thing can be found on Page Six.
In short, labor and the minimum wage that is attached to it as an economic attribute can be either elastic or inelastic. This means that labor, as an elastic attribute (and is generally the case), has a certain pain point that any given company will not cross when the cost of hiring is too much. In such cases, companies will forego hiring when that pain point is reached.
Gasoline, as an economic commodity, is generally inelastic. That means we will pay the price for this commodity, regardless of the price, because we need it. Demand may go down when the price is too high, but the commodity will always have a market.
The study shows that the minimum wage as tied to labor, under elastic conditions (as we generally find it, especially with smaller employers) actually increases poverty.
When the libs and the proglodytes start with their typical talking points about how the minimum wage "helps the kid working at Mickey D's" and how the minimum wage (helps poor people), the truth is, 60% of poor people are unemployed. Raising the minimum wage does nothing to help those people. Secondly, the average person making minimum wage isn't the poor kid working at Mickey D's, it's someone usually in their twenties. And raising the minimum wage certainly does not make these workers "more valuable" to their employer, either.
