QandO: The Minimum Wage

Jon Henke once again effortlessly destroys the myth of the minimum wage:

I recently objected to a Washington Post claim that about “450,000 Virginians are paid the minimum wage”. They have since added a correction to the story, noting that “about 60,000 Virginia residents are paid the minimum wage.” They did not mention that the source of their 450,000 figure was the liberal, Democratic Party-aligned think-tank EPI. (they misunderstood the figure, but that was the origin of the figure)

That’s much better, but it’s far from the whole story. As I pointed out previously, only 22,000 of those 60,000 Virginians actually earn the minimum wage, with the majority of the rest working at restaurants where employer-provided wages are below $5.15/r, but tips generally bring the figure substantially higher than $5.15/hr.

It gets better, worse if you support feel-good policies over empirical evidence.

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