South Dakota's Minimum Wage Fix

South Dakota doesn’t get a lot of love these days: North Dakota has the oil, Montana has the mountains, and millions of elementary school students mispronounce the name of its capital city of Pierre every year. (It’s “Peer,” not “Pee-yair.”)

But this fall, South Dakota voters have the chance to approve a really good idea that the rest of the country should pay attention to: allowing employers to hire teenagers for less than the state’s minimum wage.

That’s the biggest problem with the ever-popular idea of raising the minimum wage: It pushes people with less-valuable labor — young people, immigrants, workers without a high school diploma — out of the workforce. Teen labor simply isn’t worth very much, but getting them into the workforce comes with big benefits. (More on that in a bit.)

By lowering the minimum wage for teenagers, we can get some of the benefits of a higher minimum wage — higher wages for people who might lack bargaining power with their employers — while avoiding one of the major downsides and making it harder for young people to find a job.

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