Even more harm than good
In his Oct. 2 column, "More harm than good," Austin Raynor egregiously violates of the first law of statistics: Correlation is not causation. In proof of his assertion that raising the minimum wage is harmful to college-age people, he cites the rise in the unemployment rate from 2007 to the present. What Raynor did not mention is that the rise in the minimum wage is correlated with higher unemployment across all groups of people - but correlation is not causation! The rise in the unemployment rate is also correlated with the worst recession since the Great Depression. Economic theory suggests that recessions cause unemployment to rise. The rise in unemployment since 2007 that Raynor sees is a result of the recession first and foremost and provides no justification for any hypothesis about the minimum wage.