Rantz: Seattle minimum wage study appears insanely biased

If the National Rifle Association came out with a study that showed guns in a positive light, the Left would be understandably dismissive of the data. It’s not to say their data is wrong, per se, but they’re clearly biased.

Will the Left, then, reject a study showing positive effects of the $15 minimum wage in Seattle when the study authors advocate for the positions their study says is beneficial? Of course not. Ideology breeds inconsistency. Mayor Ed Murray has already touted the study. In fact, he asked for it to be done by a group known to publish data showing positive impacts of minimum wage.

According to the UC Berkeley study (coincidentally released on the three-year anniversary of the city’s minimum wage passage), Seattle’s $15 minimum wage law didn’t cost restaurant workers any jobs.

“Our results show that wages in food services did increase — indicating the policy achieved its goal,” the study said.

Maybe this is true (though an unbiased study shows significantly more mixed reactions). Unfortunately, the study authors’ clear bias renders it as useless and tarnished as any pro-gun NRA study.

Let’s look two of the study authors. They both advocate for higher wages and it just so happens their research supports the views they political advocate on behalf of. Confirmation bias, anyone?

Michael Reich: He is a radical economist who helped found the Union for Radical Political Economics, which is a socialist, anti-capitalist organization. He has advocated, politically, for a minimum wage increase and, according to to the Albany Times Union, his research team collaborated with labor union groups looking to push a minimum wage hike. A separate study he was involved in, which, of course, showed the benefits of a minimum wage increase, received funding from a group that gets “substantial union funding.”

Dr. Sylvia Allegretto: She is a progressive ideologue critical of capitalism, who openly advocates for a higher and “decent” minimum wage, saying now is the time raise the wage “if we are at all concerned or serious about ever widening inequality…” She routinely attacks corporations and the rich on her Twitter account.

These two have a clear bias. I assume an argument that they would make — and I think that’s what Allegretto is doing here when I asked her about her bias — is that the data leads them to hold their beliefs. Fair enough. But they still hold a deep bias, which calls into question their results and analysis, along with their motives. Am I to believe that they’d say a -NRA study should be lauded for its pro-gun data? When I asked Allegretto on Twitter, she remained silent.

Here’s the truth: both sides of this debate will have to wait much longer to get any conclusive or meaningful data on the impacts of this law. People claiming the sky is falling are basing their opinions on anecdotes. Those anecdotes are important, surely, but they’re not necessarily reflective of a trend. People claiming there are no issues whatsoever have their heads in the sand, are ignoring data that doesn’t paint as rosy of a picture, and (for many) they are tied to union interests that benefit off of a wage increase.

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