Book Review of Restoring the Middle Class through Wage Policy: Arguments for a Minimum Wage by Oren Levin-Waldman

Abstract

When I was invited to review Oren Levin-Waldman’s Restoring the Middle Class through Wage Policy, my first reaction was to ask whether the federal minimum wage was an appropriate policy lever for addressing the decline in the middle class. As our politicians and institutions think about ways to restore the middle class, updating the minimum wage is a natural place to start. Over the past 50 years, the minimum wage has declined in real terms from about $12 an hour in 1969 to $7.25 today. If minimum wages had instead kept up with productivity growth, today’s minimum wage would be about $30 an hour.