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The deaths of two individuals this week remind us of some important things in life.
In 1996, AEI published “The Effects of the Minimum Wage on Employment,” edited by AEI economist Marv Kosters. The publication was the result of a seminar on new work on the minimum wage. A book by David Card and Alan Krueger, “Myth and Measurement: The New Economics of the Minimum Wage” (1995), had “rekindled,” in Kosters’ description, interest in the effects of the minimum wage on employment, an issue that many economists felt was settled. The Card and Krueger book, Kosters said, “challenged the consensus among labor market economists that increasing the minimum wage would reduce employment of teenagers and other low-wage workers.” The debate continues to this day, and AEI economist Michael Strain has written about it recently. Kosters brought experts together to examine the evidence in 1996 and Card and Krueger made a presentation. They ultimately decided not to participate in the book’s publication, but Kosters summarized their views. The competition of ideas has long defined AEI, and the long-running debate over minimum wage effects illustrates AEI’s efforts to foster it through civil debate and adherence to facts and data. We mourn Krueger’s death at the young age of 58.
Also this week, former Senator Birch Bayh (D-IN) passed away. His connection to AEI involved AEI adjunct scholar Martin Diamond, a distinguished scholar who wrote about, among other things, efforts to abolish the Electoral College, a debate that is front and center once again. Diamond, too, died young at age 57. He was testifying before the Constitutional Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary on a proposal to abolish the Electoral College in July 1977 when he suffered a heart attack. Senators Birch Bayh and Orrin Hatch tried to revive him, but he died two hours later. AEI has continued to encourage debate on the Electoral College and has invited individuals with different perspectives to write about it, most recently in an edited volume by John Fortier. On Diamond’s passing, New York Times quoted Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY), who described him as a distinguished scholar, who “almost singlehandedly established the relevance of the thought and doings of the American Founders for this generation.” And Sen. Bayh, who also encouraged debate and discourse, was the author of two constitutional amendments, including the 25th on presidential succession, a subject on which both John Fortier and Norm Ornstein have written and commented extensively while working on the AEI-Brookings project on continuity of government.
These debates remind us of the durability of public policy issues and the importance of civil debate on issues that have great consequence for the nation.
The deaths of two individuals this week remind us of some important things in life.
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