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"The law of demand says that at a higher price, less is demanded, and it applies to grapefruit, cars, tickets to Terminator movies and, yes, labor. Since a legislated increase in the price of labor does not magically increase workers' productivity, some workers -- the least-productive ones -- will lose their jobs. That's why economists looking for the effect of the minimum wage on employment don't look at data on 45-year-old men but, instead, on teenagers and young adults, especially black teenagers and young adults. Paul Samuelson, the first American winner of the Nobel prize in economics, put it succinctly back in the 1960s, when analyzing a proposal to raise the minimum wage to $2 an hour: 'What good does it do a black youth to know that an employer must pay him $2 an hour if the fact that he must be paid that amount is what keeps him from getting a job?'"