The February 28, 2014 New York Times included yet another editorial favoring an increase in the minimum wage. But the Times’s editors have no excuse this time. By publishing this editorial they have proved that they are intellectually dishonest. This from the editorial:
One 2013 study by three economists — Arindrajit Dube, T. William Lester and Michael Reich — compared the experiences of businesses in neighboring counties in different states and found less turnover in states that had raised the minimum wage. Workers were less likely to leave on their own, and managers were more likely to keep the workers they had on staff to avoid the cost of recruiting and training replacements.
There’s only one slight, minor problem. After their previous February 9 editorial on the same subject I sent the editors a long e-mail citing the Neumark, Salas, and Wascher paper and pointing out that this paper refutes both of the studies cited by the Times editors.
Are the Times editors willfully ignorant, or are they just plain stupid? I just report. You decide.
