With California’s recent minimum wage increase for fast food workers and with the school year now over, the summer job economy is on my mind. As the legendary economist Thomas Sowell said, “The real minimum wage is always zero," so what does this mean for teenagers looking to earn money this summer? Without work experience, teens are the first to suffer from arbitrary minimum wage hikes. No employer can pay employees more than the value of their labor, and the fact is that many, if not most, teens aren’t the best workers. They may be good kids, and they may even work hard, but most job skills take real-life experience to master. If we want young people to succeed and earn good money in the long run, we need to let employers pay them what their labor is actually worth. Simply put, child labor is the solution.