Maybe What We Really Need Is Minimum Journalism Standards
The Albuquerque Journal again reports uncritically (subscription) the findings of a camp following whore.
This time it’s Olivier Uyttebrouck who uncritically reports what an “economist” says:
“Workers who would be affected by the proposed minimum wage average 31 years old, said Robert Pollin, a University of Massachusetts at Amherst professor.”
And:
“Of workers who earn less than $7.50 an hour, 27 percent are ages 15-19 and 73 percent are 20 or older, he said.”
Let me expose these misleading statistics by way of an example: Suppose we have 4-20 year olds and 1-70 year old working below the proposed $7.50 per hour threshold. Their average age is 30! Does that give a clear picture of that population? If we switch one of the 20 year olds to 19, then 80 percent of the population is over 20. Does that give a clear picture of the population?
What really gets me about local reporting on the minimum wage is that not one reporter (that I know of) recognizes that the vast majority of the economics profession concludes that “living wage” ordinances are harmful to the workers they are purported to help.
In: Uncategorized
Tagged with: Economics in Focus
