Topic: WorldNetDaily
It's not often that we come across a statement that is so flat-out wrong it defies reality, but when we do, it's usually at WorldNetDaily (i.e., Joseph Farah's patently false assertion that WND "strives for 'fair and balanced' news coverage" and that his reporters "are always encouraged and required to seek out multiple sources and contrary viewpoints").
Which brings us to Jesse Lee Peterson's May 24 WND column. He spends it railing against the minimum wage, and its climax is this statement: "The minimum wage has never helped blacks, and it won’t help them now."
Hoo boy. Where to begin? For starters, researchers have found quite the opposite:
- The Economic Policy Institute found that the share of black workers that would benefit from one minimum wage hike proposal is larger than the black population as a whole.
- The Center for American Progress reports that raising the current minimum wage would raise income among black Americans as a whole by $5.2 billion.
- The AFL-CIO claims that 4,123,000 African American workers would benefit if the federal minimum wage were increased to $10.10 per hour.
Peterson also ignores the fact that the main reason the minimum wage may not have helped blacks in its early years is because it originally exempted numerous professions dominated by blacks. Then again, conservatives use this fact to instead demonize the minimum wage rather than acknowledge that non-discrimination laws, along with the overturning of many of those exemptions, were needed to counter that effect.
So Peterson's claim is not just laughably false but ignorant as well.Would we expect any less for him and WND?
