THINK IT THROUGH.  Raise the minimum wage with the hope of reducing income inequality.

The increase in the minimum wage made it less lucrative for firms to hire low skilled people and the recession piled on.

  The timing is all wrong: produce more income inequality.

It may well be that the minimum wage hike of 2007, with its corresponding job losses and employer cutbacks in hours worked, was sufficient to cause the level of payroll employment to erode enough so that the start date of recession was pushed up to November-December 2007, some four to five months sooner than it might have done otherwise as the outcome of the oil shock.

And should that be the case, the increase of the federal minimum wage in 2007 would join with the bursting of the housing bubble and the fallout from the oil shock as the third leg forming the current recession.

But it feels so good to pass the legislation.