I appreciate the research you've put into this and you are making good arguments. You've provided some study-based arguments that low-skilled market participat

I appreciate the research you've put into this and you are making good arguments. You've provided some study-based arguments that low-skilled market participation hasn't been harmed by historical changes - my question for you is, do you think this is an absolute rule, or just a happenstance due to the regions under study not making minimum wage high enough to be really detectable? i.e. that few workers are actually being paid minimum wages, so changes don't hit large parts of the population. To clarify this, I'm curious about your opinion on a thought experiment - and I'm not setting this up to trap you - I also favor some type of living wage and a fair society, and don't support absolute free market capitalism by any means. But the question - with a 50$ minimum wage, can you see how someone would think that a lot of low-skilled workers would be out of a job? I can make the number as high as necessary; the point is to check whether you think that this change, given employers freedom to hire or not hire, would result in lower skilled workers losing jobs preferentially. To me, at high minimum wages, this is obvious - but at lower wages, this wouldn't be a prominent effect, and the net life quality gain of the minimum wage law may be positive. Just trying to get us on the same page here finding a balance between the gains from ensuring living wages, but admitting that minimum wages also have a disproportionate effect on lower skilled workers, which becomes more prominent as you set the minimum wage higher; if you're willing to admit that a 50$ minimum conceptually hits lower skilled workers harder, just on the face of it, this applies even lacking empirical studies of an actual implementation of it. Given that, we just need to balance the tradeoffs on the top and bottom here; personally, I think solutions like EITC can dodge most of the skill-based discrimination high minimum wages might generate, and also put the onus on the population to pay taxes to support this. I think the opponents of minimum wages, regardless of their ideological rationale, would be persuaded more easily by an admission that there are costs as well as gains of high minimum wages; attempts (like EITC) to reduce distortion would undercut a lot of their objections, and might allow improved systems to actually be implemented (since businesses have much less reason to oppose EITC than direct minimum wages); this would actually improve the general quality of life.