In the ebb and flow of interventionist politics, there are some issues that surface periodically regardless of how many times and how completely they are proven to be harmful to the very people they are purported to help. Currently the tide is once again carrying the minimum wage to the forefront of collective attention. Supporters of this and similar measures often use straw-man arguments, like the one in the picture below.
I discovered this ad through one of my friends who shared it on Facebook. It was originally posted on July 12, 2014 on the website of OurTime.org. I propose to deconstruct this pseudo-argument here, pointing out its major errors. I do this not to convince hard-core supporters of raising the minimum wage that it is a bad idea; I doubt that is possible by any means. Rather, this can be a short lesson for those interested in sound economic analysis in how to proceed when confronted by opposing arguments buttressed by seemingly sound statistics.
This post was published at Ludwig von Mises Institute on Tuesday, August 26, 2014.
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