Wall Street Journal Promotes Falsehood That Higher Wages Push Workers Onto Government "Dole"

The Wall Street Journal published an error-riddled piece claiming that increasing the federal minimum wage would force more Americans to rely on social safety-net programs when in fact the exact opposite is true.

In a May 5 opinion piece, New York lawyer John H. Heyer argued the minimum wage is a "scam." He then claimed increasing wages will force businesses to lay off employees and, in turn, swell the ranks of federal social safety-net programs, which Heyer refers to as the government "dole." From the Journal:

Opponents of livable wages frequently claim that the minimum wage drives up unemployment, often citing the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) most recent report on proposals to increase the federal minimum wage. The CBO report does project that total employment could decrease by between "very slight[ly]" and 1 million by the end of 2016, but that conclusion flies in the face of the overwhelming majority of economic evidence.

A February 2013 study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) reviewed nearly a decade of research on the minimum wage and concluded that "the minimum wage has little or no discernible effect on the employment prospects of low-wage workers." The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) similarly reviewed the available literature on the minimum wage and concluded that "raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 will not lead to job loss." Conservative media jumped on a March 2014 survey by Express Employment Professionals claiming that businesses would cut jobs due to an increased wage, but even that survey found that 62 percent of minimum wage employers and 81 percent of all employers would not lay off workers as a result of increased wages.

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http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/05/06/wall-street-journal-promotes-falsehood-that-hig/199184