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@ 4a9be43c:69f67a77
2025-05-02 13:39:43
Having dug into these claims some and checked out some of the research, it seems the waters are pretty muddy. I found plenty to support my view, and I think the balance lies in my favor, but I don't think I'll have a meaningful chance of convincing you of that by citing individual papers. I could collect a bunch of papers to cite, but you'd find your own so you could counter with some other papers, we could maybe go back and forth over quality of them, and ultimately, neither of us would make a convincing argument for the other that way.
So I'm going to approach this a slightly different way. Let's consider which side is more likely to experience bias. It's well established at this point that research funded by a group with goals has a strong tendency to agree with those goals, even when the facts don't actually align with those goals. That is, research funded by biased groups produces biased results. They don't pay for research that doesn't support them, and if they do, they bury the results the best they can.
With that in mind, let's consider what groups could conceivably be clouding the issue with faulty, biased research. Let's look at the side opposing minimum wage first. This is a pretty obvious one. Every employer is against it because it can even lead to growth in wages well above the minimum, and they want to protect their profits. Every business is in favor of denying an increase. It's in the best interest of every rich family, every corporate think tank, basically everyone with an excessive amount of wealth. Hell, to an extent, even government funded research is suspect simply because the government consistently acts in the best interest of business when forced to choose between them and the people.
Now, contrast that with groups in favor of increasing minimum wage. I don't see near the capacity to influence research here. The primary group in favor of this is the working class, and even then, primarily the poorest among them. They're unlikely to form any sort of lobbying group or think tank or research institute because they simply can't afford it. Unions may have some incentive, but they've been utterly thrashed in recent decades, so they're not really potent enough by my estimate. I can't think of anything else, really, but I'd legitimately love to hear other options if you can suggest some.
From this perspective, it seems far, far, FAR more likely that dishonest, biased, or otherwise faulty research would favor denying an increase. Almost all moneyed interests favor keeping wages low. Given that, I think it's MUCH more likely that the truth leans in favor of a reasonable minimum wage. I understand that there may still be imperfections and problems to address, but on the whole, I think balance lies in favor of maintaining and increasing minimum wage.