Remaking a Bargain: The Political Logic of the Minimum Wage in the United States

Abstract

This essay explores how political processes shaped the origins and development of the federal minimum wage in the United States, attempting to impose an order and logic on that process. It offers an analytically grounded narrative that abstracts from the historical details and interprets a broad sweep of outcomes between the New Deal and the present. Rather than identifying only the preferences of the ardent minimum wage supporters (and opponents), I identify those members of an enacting coalition (including the president) or veto players whose preferences had to be taken into account for a minimum wage bargain to be struck. For each episode, the analytical narrative identifies the coalition that made the minimum wage agreement-the members of Congress among whom a bargain was struck and codified into legislation, plus (usually) the president. The narrative also determines the nature of the compromise that enabled members of an enacting coalition to adopt an increase in the minimum wage. In each instance, policymakers were "heirs" before they were choosers: The heavy hand of later New Deal history shaped subsequent political choices.