THE ECONOMY EXISTS TO CREATE WEALTH...:

Economists typically evaluate issues from both an equity and efficiency perspective.  Many economists favor policies that maximize efficiency (making the pie as large as possible), combined with some redistribution to compensate the losers.  Thus they favor free trade, combined with a program to help workers that lose their jobs due to import competition.

Oddly, Peter Coy seems to think this analogy points in the direction of boosting the minimum wage.  Exactly the opposite is true.  If we wanted to match the standard economic approach to international trade, we'd abolish the minimum wage and replace it with some sort of subsidy for low wage workers.  Even if that were politically impossible, you would definitely not want a $15 minimum wage.  A much superior policy would be a $10 minimum wage combined with a $5/hour wage subsidy, where the subsidy phases out at the rate of 50 cents/hour for each $1/hour pay raise, ending entirely when pay reaches $20/hour. 

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