Minimum wage laws are suddenly vogue. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 18 states began 2019 with a new minimum wage. Three states have since passed legislation to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour, a wage floor the House of Representatives is seeking to make the law of the land.

The age-old lesson of Econ 101, that, to quote Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman in 1998, "the higher wage reduces the quantity of labor demanded, and hence leads to unemployment," is no longer considered rock solid.

"Economism" 

In a 2017 article in The Atlantic titled "The Curse of Econ 101," James Kwak cited basic economic theory as an example of "economism"—what he called the "misleading application of basic lessons from Economics 101."