Christina Romer on minimum age.

From a NY times article. Mankiw also cited here.

Prof. Romer discusses why minimum wage policy may not achieve its intended goal.

First,  basic economics tells us that minimum wage harms competition and reduces the employment. You may want to counter-argue that empirically the minimum wage does not necessarily lower the employment.  Then she took a step further to say that even if employment is manitaned (as opposed to micro  101), still the minimum wage may not be a good policy, as employment is maintained:

1. Because of high turnover. Good thing.
2. Because a higher wage attracts more efficient works and raise productivity. Partly good, but this could harm the disadvantaged.
3. Because the increased wage is passed on to consumers, including the very poor.

Quite convincing. At least, we should stop naively taking an empirical relationship between the minimum wage and the employment rate in a reduced-form regression formula. We have to understand mechanics.