{"id":8336,"date":"2017-08-03T16:13:17","date_gmt":"2017-08-03T20:13:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=8336"},"modified":"2017-08-03T16:13:17","modified_gmt":"2017-08-03T20:13:17","slug":"mocos-dubious-minimum-wage-survey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=8336","title":{"rendered":"MoCo\u2019s Dubious Minimum Wage Survey"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Executive Branch has released its long-awaited study<\/a> of the impact of MoCo\u2019s $15 minimum wage bill and it is taking fire.\u00a0 The primary objection from bill supporters is that much of the study, including the assumptions for its economic modeling, is based on an unscientific, self-selected sample of business owners who were asked to predict what they would do if the minimum wage were raised.\u00a0 A senior economic analyst with the Economic Policy Institute labeled it \u201cabsurd junk science\u201d<\/a> and wrote:<\/p>\n

The closest analogy I can think of would be if the FDA was considering approval of a new drug and instead of reviewing any studies or trials, they instead simply asked the drug company \u201cwhat percentage of patients do you think this drug will harm versus help?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Your author agrees with these criticisms.\u00a0 Want to know why?\u00a0 Because your author was asked to fill out the minimum wage survey!<\/p>\n

On May 12, the county sent me the email below asking for participation in the minimum wage survey.\u00a0 Note that the email says, \u201cAll responses will be anonymous, and the project team will be unable to link responses to specific businesses. Your responses will be used to inform our analysis around wage compression, job loss, and other relevant issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Now, I am self-employed, but I do not own an incorporated business or employ other people.\u00a0 Just out of curiosity, I clicked on the Survey Monkey link right after receiving the email.\u00a0 Yes, the link worked and the survey was ready to accept responses.\u00a0 If I had filled it out (and I didn\u2019t!), by its own admission above, the survey administrator would have had no way to filter out my responses or flag them as fraudulent.<\/p>\n

Lord knows who else got the email and exactly who filled out the survey!<\/p>\n

Your author does not express an opinion on the policy merits of the $15 minimum wage bill.\u00a0 That\u2019s a topic for a future post.\u00a0 But the minimum wage business survey is a different matter.\u00a0 It was obviously subject to self-selection bias and even potential manipulation.\u00a0 The fact that it was administered in flagrant violation of all known scientific surveying techniques disqualifies it from being used as a tool to evaluate public policy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco. The Executive Branch has released its long-awaited study of the impact of MoCo\u2019s $15 minimum wage bill and it is taking fire.\u00a0 The primary objection from bill supporters is that much of the study, including the assumptions for its economic modeling, is based on an unscientific, self-selected sample of business owners who … Continue reading MoCo\u2019s Dubious Minimum Wage Survey<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[151,1898],"tags":[1545,1899],"class_list":["post-8336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adam-pagnucco","category-minimum-wage","tag-adam-pagnucco","tag-minimum-wage"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-2as","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8336"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8340,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8336\/revisions\/8340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}