At Ballotpedia, referenced here yesterday, we learn that a number of minimum wage measures were on the ballots this last election. The results were interesting. “In California and Massachusetts, voters rejected ballot measure to increase the minimum wage — the first time since 1996 that minimum wage increase measures were defeated.”
As Paul Jacob has often explained, in these pages, minimum wage hikes do not do what their advocates think, or at least say, they do. And the usual results present a problem for the policy’s advocates. A Reason article by Justin Zuckerman, “The New York Times Claimed D.C.’s Minimum Wage Hike Created Jobs. We Exposed Their Error,” from Friday, shows a grand example of a persuasive article in the Gray Lady being used to convince voters that a Washington, D.C., minimum wage hike did no harm while also being based on a gross misunderstanding of statistics. Its author “misunderstood the data she was looking at. The chart she linked to in the article presented numbers ‘in the thousands,’ meaning that the actual data were not 14,168 but 14,168,000, which also makes sense because Krishna [the Times contributor] didn’t realize she was reading national BLS data — not local figures.” A huge error. Which Reason told The Times about, “and the paper issued a correction.”
But the advocates for minimum wage hikes continued to cite the article, despite the error, despite the admission that was the official correction.
Some errors go on repeat because they re-inforce ideological prejudice. The minimum wage is one of those policies usually advanced in ignorance of all the work done on the issue. Often in defiance of common sense.
