Minimum Wage

If you tell me that you levitate during meditation, I will probably not believe you, whereas if you tell me that you had eggs for breakfast, I will believe you. I will probably also believe you if you tell me that you had lunch with the Queen of England providing you tell me how this unlikely event took place and if there is no obvious reason for you to lie to me. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence or plausible corroborating detail. Thomas Bayes taught us to put numbers to these considerations.

I view the claim that a higher minimum wage does not lead to unemployment as extraordinary for approximately the same reason that I view claims of levitation with great suspicion. I understand the workings of the mechanisms that push towards increased unemployment and hear no plausible amelioration of these mechanisms. I understand that we do not and cannot do controlled experiments, nonetheless this places a pall over anecdotal evidence.