milagre mínimo garantido (2)

Via lowercase liberty ("left-wing religion"), "And Then a Miracle Occurs" de Gary Galles:

[...] I saw a particular single-panel cartoon. It showed a professor-scientist type up at a blackboard, working at the successive stages of a proof. But he gets stuck. After much thinking, he writes the next step as "Then a miracle occurs…" after which his proof can continue. [...] Someone desperate to demonstrate their position, but stymied by a gap in their argument, invokes a "then a miracle occurs" step, from which their supposed "proof" can continue.

Minimum wage advocates take a similar approach. They take the facts that such laws raise the legal hourly pay of some people and that, other things equal, low-skill workers would benefit from being paid more for their efforts, and conclude that higher minimum wages connect them. However, raising the lowest wage officially allowable (assuming all the evasion mechanisms can be controlled) does not mean they will be able to find the jobs they desire at those wages. That would be a miracle, because higher wages will lead employers to offer fewer jobs than before, not the larger number workers want at above-market wages. But that fact, which overturns the conclusions of minimum (as well as living) wage proponents, is also finessed by their "analysis."