“The key to making work pay is encouraging employers to pay higher wages to people at the bottom.”—Robert B. Reich, American Prospect, June 19, 2000

“Living wage laws offer us the temptation of legislating ourselves into prosperity. Only economic reality stands in< the way.” —J.D. Tuccille, Free-Market.Net, October 25, 2000

In 1991, the U.S. economy pulled out of a year-long recession and entered a period of sustained economic growth that was to become the longest boom in the nation’s history by the start of the twenty-first century. Fueled by the technology revolution, the development of the Internet, and globalization, a flurry of entrepreneurial activity led to the rise of new businesses (albeit some short-lived) and the rapid expansion of existing ones. The economy favored the American worker with national unemployment rates at around 4 percent toward the end of the 1990s, their...