With absolutely zero media attention, minimum wage workers finally got a raise on July 1st. To $5.85 an hour. So before you pop the champagne, give this paper a read- it's by University of Massachusetss-Amherst economist Robert Pollin. It's on how high the minimum wage should be, and what real-world experience shows are the unintended consequences of labor market interventions. My favorite passage: The unfairness of the $7.25 minimum in mid-2009 becomes clearer still when we consider the combined effects of price increases (inflation) and rise in labor productivity—i.e. the total basket of goods and services that the average worker produces in a year. The rate of inflation between 1997 and 2009 is likely to be about 3 percent per year. This means that the buying power of a $5.15 minimum wage will have fallen by about 40 percent over these years. Meanwhile, average labor productivity will have grown by well over 30 percent between 1997-2009. This allows businesses to pay their lowwage workers 30 percent more (in real, inflation-adjusted dollars) and have enough money left over for their profits to also rise by at least 30 percent. The fact that the minimum wage has been falling in inflation-adjusted dollars while productivity has been rising means that profit opportunities have soared while lowwage workers have gotten nothing from the country's productivity bounty. Inflation and productivity gains seems like a strong moral grounding for a minimum wage increase. In this framework, all the minimum wage does is ensure that people are paid in accordance with what they produce. That may not be the only reason for having a minimum wage, but it's one that deserves greater emphasis.