An unintended consequence of minimum wage hikes: more gang violence?
I’ve been trying to help my Little Brother, Jay, find a job for the summer. While he’s a great kid and doesn’t get into any trouble, we’d like to help him stay out of the way of some of his peers who do. The summer is a prime time for violence in South Boston. Junior gangsters, their schedules freed of the burden of terrorizing the public schools, now have plenty of free time in less structured environments. Which means lots of shootings. As a way to keep “at risk” kids occupied, there are several programs in place to provide summer jobs to kids in Boston. My guess is partly the motivation is to keep kids from getting into trouble, and partly to get them of the ghetto and out of harms way.
Unfortunately, when our state government decided to raise the minimum wage, they made no exception for teenagers. So, the public funding that provides jobs to inner city kids will now serve many fewer kids because the money will not go as far when each kid has to be paid $8 an hour. So, in addition to the higher cost of having to pay teenagers a living wage for an economically meaningless “stay out of trouble” summer job, there is also the added cost to society as a result of leaving more kids out on the streets. (Fewer than half the kids who apply can get jobs.)
A lot of people, including some smart economists, think that minimum wage is a bad idea which ultimately harms more people than it helps. Hard core Libertarians think it should be done away with entirely. I think that may be too simplistic and extreme, and my point here isn’t even to touch on that larger question. What this example does point out, however, is that before we worry too much about the party of the people we’re electing, it would be nice if we could just find politicians who were actually remotely intelligent. A poorly implemented policy is a bad policy, no matter what.
(By the way, if anybody reading this would like to hire a really nice 14 year old boy from Dorchester for the summer, let me know. He is hard-working and willing to do any kind of work, including cleaning. Here is a picture of us working on a project together. Great kid.)
