Co-blogger Bryan raised two good questions the other day about unpaid internships. That gets to one of the points I often make when I talk about the minimum wage in speeches or in interviews:

The government is saying, in effect, you may pay $7.25 an hour or more or you may pay 0 an hour but don’t let me catch you paying more than 0 and less than $7.25.

I made this point in a previous post titled “Israel’s Nasty Minimum Wage.” Of course, as some commenters pointed out, the government is increasingly making unpaid internships illegal. It has found one more way of making it hard for people to advance.

Also, as commenter MikeM pointed out early in the thread, I had an earlier post about Jan Helfeld doing a great interview with Nancy Pelosi some years ago in which he put her on the spot on this same issue. Watch the interview and see how you think she does.