Conservatives tout studies by two academic labor economists William Wascher of the Federal Reserve Board and David Neumark of the University of California-Irvine to counter liberal claims by liberal activists and left leaning academic economists that the minimum wage does not cause diemployment effects (as neoclassical economic theory would suggest it does).

That is exactly what happened in the National Review Online's blog: The Corner today in the wake of the announcement that the President will be nominating Alan Krueger to be the new chair of the CEA. The NRO is apparently still bitter about Krueger's work with David Card in the early nineties that showed a slight increase in employment in New Jersey after a minimum wage was implemented in New Jersey but not in Pennsylvania. The blog carries out the tired battle that was resolved a couple decades if not a decade ago in several journal articles and books (though Neumark and Wascher do have a new book out on the minimum wage) that Dean Baker successfully rebuffs, here.

However, rarely are Neumark and Wascher ever asked by journalists and bloggers what the actual conclusions of their study are. Good thing the ol' UCI Youtube account did! What Neumark said was:

Even if there are disemployment effects, it is not the central policy question. One could imagine a situation where a minimum wage increase cost some workers some jobs somewhere but delivered a lot of benefits...if 10 workers lost their jobs but 1000 families were lifted out of poverty we'd probably say that's a pretty good trade off. Every government regulation probably cost someone somewhere a job, it doesn't mean we should do it, it just means we should be thinking about the tradeoffs.