Mark Hyman’s recent commentary on the alleged negative side effects of Seattle’s experiment with raising the minimum wage is a fine example of a fairly typical argumentative technique: when wishing to attack a general principle, choose a single specific instance to stand in for the whole—preferably one that appears particularly vulnerable.
This allows one to narrow a complex topic down to one concrete, simple (and sometimes simplistic) instance. And if this instance is atypical of the norm (and therefore much more susceptible to attack) but can be made to seem typical, so much the better.
It’s true that Hyman does not overtly use the Seattle instance to call into question the concept of the minimum wage as a whole, but it is no stretch to assume this is what he has in mind, given that the minimum wage is anathema in most uber-conservative circles.
Hyman begins his argument with a textbook example of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy: the idea that because B happened after A, then A must have caused B. He claims that following a move to an $11 minimum wage (part of a gradual increase to $15), Seattle lost restaurant jobs while areas around them gained them. He concludes, “Obviously, the wage hike forced Seattle employers to slash positions.”
Again, as any freshman comp student would find out if trying to make this argument in a paper, this is not necessarily true. In fact, any number of other reasons could be behind these numbers (assuming they are accurate, which is always a dicey proposition with Mr. Hyman). Not least of these is the oft-noted gentrification of Seattle as a city.
Hyman then pulls out what he perceives to be the “big gun” of his argument: a study done by a group of economists from the University of Washington. He cites conclusions from this study that suggest the recent rise in minimum wage led to fewer jobs and lower wages.
To say there are some problems with relying on this study is to put it mildly.
For starters, the study has yet to go through the peer review process, making it immediately something that would not pass muster in even a freshman research essay.
But, more obviously, Hyman fundamentally misstates (“lies” might be the more accurate term) about the scope of the study. He says the Washington study claims that previous studies of the effects of the minimum wage “cherry picked” their data, while the Washington study itself “examined the entire workforce.”
Not true.
In fact, although not yet officially peer reviewed, the Washington study has been looked at by outsiders, and has been found wanting. Not least of the points raised is specifically that the study, contra Hyman, does not examine the entire workforce. In fact, it categorically omits 40% of the workforce (specifically, workers as businesses that have more than one location). So, rather than examining “the entire workforce,” the study covers slightly more than half. Again, this level of misunderstanding/misrepresentation of supporting data would draw the ire of any first-year comp instructor and the paper would be returned for revisions.
Not that you have to take my word for it. That well-known lefty rag, Fortune, published a scathing critique of the study. A more thoroughly academic takedown came by way of the Economic Policy Institute. It cataloged a series of methodological flaws and suspicious outlying data in the study that run counter to a sizable preponderance of existing studies on the issue.
Moreover, a separate study by the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at the University of California-Berkeley found precisely the opposite of what the Washington study found: wages did go up, and the policy achieved its purpose. Moreover, these findings are far more consistent with previous studies on the issue that is the Washington study.
In other words, Hyman himself cherry picked a single study that seemed to support his view, and that study itself only studied a subset of the workforce (despite Hyman’s claim to the contrary).
And, it’s worth noting that the authors of the Washington study themselves would not want their results used to make blanket judgments about the wisdom, or lack thereof, of minimum wage laws. They note “one should not assume our specific findings generalize to minimum-wage policies set at the state or federal level.”
Moreover, they suggest that wealth disparity is a problem that needs government action to remedy, including funding for education. One suspects Hyman and his ilk would find the claim that there is a “problem” with wealth distribution, let alone that government should do something about it, deplorable.
Look, reasonable people can disagree on what the optimal level of the minimum wage ought to be (a modest proposal: index it to inflation, which would put it around $11.40 an hour if we had kept it constant since 1968, when unemployment was less than 4%).
The problem is when dopey arguments (such as the reduction ad absurdum argument “Well, why don’t we just make the minimum wage $100 an hour if it’s so great?”) or cherry-picked studies of singular examples that are then misrepresented are used instead of reasoned discourse. Not only is the issue itself then distorted, but the public sphere itself it impoverished.
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