Everything in that editorial is still true today. "There's a virtual consensus among economists that the minimum wage is an idea whose time has passed," it said. "Raise the legal minimum price of labor above the productivity of the least skilled workers and few will be hired," it correctly observed. In conclusion: "The idea of using a minimum wage to overcome poverty is old, honorable -- and fundamentally flawed. It's time to put this hoary debate behind us, and find a better way to improve the lives of people who work very hard for very little."
Even in the 1990s, the Times remained skeptical about the value of raising the minimum wage. An April 5, 1996, editorial conceded that a proposed 90-cent increase in the minimum wage would wipe out 100,000 jobs. It said that Republican critics of the minimum wage as a "crude" antipoverty tool were right.
By 1999, however, the nation's newspaper of record had completely reversed itself. In a Sept. 14 editorial, it endorsed a sharp increase in the minimum wage, arguing that it would have no impact whatsoever on unemployment. "For millions of workers, a higher minimum wage means a better shot at self-sufficiency," it stated.
Gone are all the old arguments that higher minimum wages cost jobs, are mainly promoted by unions to stifle competition, that most of the benefits go to the children of the well-to-do rather than the poor and that legislating higher wage costs would be inflationary. Now the Times accepts the justification for a higher minimum wage as given and doesn't even try to marshal any facts or analyses in favor of its new position. It simply says the minimum wage should be raised, as if its opinion on the matter is all that anyone needs to know.
I think the Times owes its readers some explanation for its about-face. After all, there has been no change in ownership at the paper that caused its editorial policy to change, as was the case at the New York Post and the Daily News. The Times is still owned and run by the same family and has had the same liberal editorial policy since the 1930s. So what gives with the minimum wage? Why was it bad for 60 years and now has suddenly become good? Inquiring minds want to know.
I won't hold my breath waiting for an answer. In the meantime, I recommend the book, "Times Change: The Minimum Wage and The New York Times" by economist Richard McKenzie for those curious about this case of editorial apostasy.