CBO scores minimum wage increase

A popular Democratic proposal to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, championed by President Obama, could reduce total employment by 500,000 workers by the second half of 2016. But it would also lift 900,000 families out of poverty and increase the incomes of 16.5 million low-wage workers in an average week.

-- NYTimes

I've made this same complaint several times before, but seriously... why don't Democrats favor an expansion of the EITC instead? The EITC targets its help better and doesn't have the downside of (probably) decreasing employment.

The common argument for wanting to raise the minimum wage with a raise in the EITC, rather than just the EITC, is that the minimum wage reduces the amount of the EITC that benefits employers rather than employees:

Research by Berkeley economist Jesse Rothstein shows that roughly 27 cents on the dollar from the EITC is passed on to employers. So there's some leakage there.

-- link

But so what? After all, most economists expect minimum wage hikes to cut jobs because it increases the cost of employment for employers. This is obviously a bad thing, all else equal. When we point out that the EITC instead reduces the cost of employment, then by the same logic this will decrease unemployment. Why, exactly, is this an effect we should try to counteract?

If the minimum wage were the only possible tool for raising the incomes of the poor, then maybe I'd support the hike to $10.10 after weighing the pros and cons. I don't know. But it's not the only tool, and in comparison to the alternatives, I just don't support raising the minimum wage.