I started to look up what has happened with those states that had already increased minimum wage and what has it done for their economy. I came across an article title that read, "States That Raised Their Minimum Wages Are Experiencing Faster Job Growth." I had to read this article, in my mind I was thinking how is it possible that all of the states that have increased their minimum wage experience faster job growth than those who have not?
The article then went on to state, "The average change in employment for those states over the first five months of the year as compared with the last five of 2013 is .99 percent, while the average for all remaining states is .68 percent." What the author did was find the average increase of all of the states that had increased their minimum wage (0.99) and also find the average increase of all the states that had not increased their minimum wage (0.68). When I got to this point of the reading I felt that I had been had. The title is fallacious, "States That Raised Their Minimum Wages Are Experiencing Faster Job Growth." Just because some of the states that increased their minimum wages had above average increases, the author was trying to lump in all of the states that increased their minimum wages make all who read the title believe that it is better for each state to increase their minimum wage. I am not saying either to increase or not to increase, but to fallaciously credit the positive growth of a few states to all states to me is a blatant lie. this article is abusing statistics and is fallacious. If I were to interpret the statistics I would say there have been some states that increased their income, but they were not the top states but did include the worst state with the worst neg growth. In my opinion in order to be able to say "the states that increased their minimum wages are experiencing faster job growth," all of the states would have to be experiencing faster job growth then all the others. According to the article nine of the states were above the midpoint in change of employment but 4 were not. To make the fallacy worse the state with the least amount of change in employment, which was actually a decrease in employment, happened to be one of the states that had increased their minimum wage (New Jersey -0.56). The state with the highest level of change in employment was California with 2.95% increase, which at the time had not increased their minimum wage but since these results have come out California has increased their minimum wage. The article does go on to even state, " This doesn’t mean that increasing the minimum wage necessarily creates more jobs. “While this kind of simple exercise can’t establish causality, it does provide evidence against theoretical negative employment effects of minimum-wage increases.” The article itself admits that an increase in minimum wage doesn't necessarily create more jobs. In conclusion this is not a post on whether or not the minimum wage should increase, it is however a post on being careful about the titles you read and make sure you read the article and use sound reasoning to what is being said.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/07/03/3456393/minimum-wage-state-increase-employment/
Great job.
ReplyDeleteI so dislike misleading headlines. Only those with a little background info on this subject would know if that really is true or not.
But regardless of what economics and a free market say, the government has taken control of health care so why can they not take over how much someone is paid.
It is interesting though when you think about it. If someone gets paid more money, doesn't that maybe put them in a higher tax bracket? In the end they take home about the same amount, but the government gets to take home the increase. What a great deal, huh?