At long last, we have an increase to the minimum wage. Personally, I’d rather have the labor market decide what an hour of work is worth in various positions but I am glad the debate is over. It’s time to move on. Unfortunately, the minimum wage became more of a political strategy rather than an economic one. If you are a Democrat, you are likely to believe that the minimum wage will lift people out of poverty and if you are a Republican you will probably suggest the free market approach or suggest that it hurts employers of industries with high concentrations of low-priced labor. While think tank economists will support whichever view their political benefactors like, the majority of “regular economists” are not supportive of the minimum wage being the most effective way to help low-income families, and likely causes more harm than good. If you agree with me, you’ll not need to pull up the academic research. If you disagree with me, please spend some time reading through the literature and for a brief moment, try to take political bias out of the discussion. Regardless, I am hopeful that it will help those that it can and I am concerned about the impacts on the individuals and families it will hurt. As for businesses, I trust you’ll make whatever changes you need to make to either maintain your labor costs or raise the price of your products. Do what you need to do. It will be interesting to watch the CPI, wage inflation, unemployment statistics, poverty levels, etc. and attempt to quantify the real consequences of government’s involvement in labor rates. However, those discussions always degrade into political parsing so around and around we go. Now that this is out of the way, I am glad it’s off the campaign dialogs for the next few years. We have big problems in this country and the income/wealth gap is one of them - unfortunately today’s increase in the minimum wage is not the answer.