[throwawaylinux]

That's not the part being taken issue with, this is:

> What Winston Plywood is doing defies almost everything we have been told about wages in Mississippi — that raising the minimum wage would cripple profits, throw company pay structures into chaos, create inflation and ultimately wreck the economy.

The minimum wage of that debate is a government legislated minimum wage, obviously.

They took a story of interest and lied about it to mislead people to put a favorable spin on a political issue. I.e., modern journalism.

[mattzito]

It’s not a lie though - the sawmill did indeed raise its minimum wage. The author posits that the experience of this sawmill defies what “we” have been told about wages across the state, because this company raised their wages and didn’t experience the negative effects that were asserted.

[agent327]

The lie is in the conclusion: "because a single company raised its minimum wage and was successful, this implies all companies can raise their minimum wage and be successful".

If you accept the premise that some work is more valuable than others, then you must also accept that having a minimum wage will rule out certain types of work as being not sufficiently valuable to actually be worth paying for. Thus, having a minimum wage law means that some jobs will disappear (or become much more expensive). Whether this trade-off is worth it or not is a political choice with arguments to be made on both sides.

[mattzito]

You can’t call a conclusion a lie because you don’t agree with it. A lie implies falsehood, where you’re just saying, “I don’t agree that this situation where raising the minimum wage of a small towns core business didn’t have negative impacts can translate to a larger scope of a whole state, because I don’t believe that’s how it works”. It’s on you to show the opposite.

[agent327]

So a conclusion that uses a false generalisation must be accepted at face value despite its faulty logic? This has nothing to do with opinion, mine or otherwise; the article is pushing a policy on the basis of broken logic. And yes, I can damn well call that a lie.

[throwawaylinux]

It is a lie. The company does not "defy" anything about the opposing side of the minimum-wage debate. It is a deliberate and calculated lie about the characterization of the minimum wage debate.

Unless there happens to be a major group I've never heard of in that state which opposes legal minimum wages and also wants legislation to outlaw companies giving pay rises to their lowest paid workers.

[smileysteve]

In addition "defies... everything we been told about" by whom?

Case studies? Economists?

Or

Vested interests? Politicians? Talk radio hosts?

Journalism should be calling out the specifics here and the ?lack? of grounding it has had, and how such ?misinformation? Is spread.