The New York Legislature’s minimum wage deal is a compromise of the worst kind, where a terrible policy is paired with token tax breaks in the hope that the latter will minimize the damage of the former.

This approach has been tried before. Federal lawmakers tied the 2007-09 minimum wage increase to a series of temporary tax breaks for businesses. Yet economists at Miami and Trinity Universities found that over 114,000 young adults were priced out of job opportunities as a result.

That’s unfortunate news for the state’s teenagers, who already suffer from a 28.4 percent unemployment rate.

MICHAEL SALTSMAN, Research director, Employment Policies Institute, Washington, D.C.