Minimum wage is a regressive tax on the poor and the young

John Hayward:

Socialist politics are an unflagging quest to repeal the laws of supply and demand at any expense, provided the expense is paid by someone other than the socialists. Thus we have the great Democrat Party economic brain trust – the same people who said unemployment benefits are the most powerful job-creating stimulus in the universe – gasping like fish stranded on the sun-baked deck of a trawler as the Congressional Budget Office projects their minimum-wage increase could kill up to a million jobs. And not in the customary 10-year “tomorrow will never come” window, but in one concentrate blast over the next two years.

Democrats declare this is unpossible, because they have spreadsheets and fortune cookies and whatnot that prove raising the minimum wage will create a billion zillion jobs. People at the low end of the income scale will have more money to spend, right? And when they spend it, jobs will sprout from the fertile soil of Barack Obama’s walking-dead economy, like dandelions rising to consume rain water. Spending money = jobs. What part of that don’t you wingnuts understand?
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Hopefully everyone who is not a left-wing ideologue understands the simple truth that raising the price of a resource reduces demand. That goes for labor, too. Of course a minimum wage hike will destroy jobs, and the people hit hardest will be those who can least afford to sacrifice their employment prospects: young people trying to enter the workforce for the first time, and people trying to fight their way out of poverty. There isn’t much the Left could do that would more brutally yank the ladder out of dependency away from their cradle-to-grave welfare clients than jack the minimum wage up, far beyond the market value of such marginal labor.
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What the Democrats are doing is a "wealth transfer" from some of the working poor, to others fortunate enough to keep their jobs.  It is also a stealth wage increase for unions whose wages are tied to a multiple of the minimum wage.  Those hurt the most are minority young people who will lose jobs are find fewer opportunities.  The same think happened when they raised the minimum wage in 2007, creating historic high unemployment for minority young people.