How members of Congress vote on increases in the minimum wage is a function of several factors, most notably party affiliation and constituent interest. But also among those factors is the existence of "right-to-work" laws in the representative's state and the presence of labor unions,...

During the Progressive period of American history the debate over the minimum wage was often between those who clung to traditional economic theory as a reason for not having a minimum wage and those who saw the efficiency-wage benefits of adopting one. Although the latter argument proved quite...

When the minimum wage was first enacted in 1938, the fiercest opposition came from the South, where wages were considerably lower that in the industrial North. Today, that opposition is found to emanate from states that have right-to-work laws (regardless of location). Using census data from the...

The concept of the minimum wage has undergone several rhetorical permutations. Originally conceived as a living wage, which would function as a family wage, it ultimately became a matter of macroeconomic policy, the goals of which were to achieve greater efficiency and in some case economic...

In this brief, Oren M. Levin-Waldman examines the structure of existing welfare programs and concludes that the current array of benefits could be synchronized and consolidated to create a new system that would provide economic incentives to work. He suggests combining elements of the earned...