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This is noteworthy, when you consider how cynically the same people will respond when asked, more generally, how government works, or how politics works, or how the economy works. Yet somehow that cynicism is put to one side when it comes to the minimum wage. It should work, so it does. Business should pay, so they do. It’s supposed to reduce poverty, so it will. Such is the strength of this belief system that people are quite unable to deal with evidence to the contrary. They grow offended, or they get angry. The one thing they do not do is change their minds.

You can see this in some of the responses as business begins to take action to insulate itself from the effect of the increase: that is, as employers begin the wholly predictable process of ensuring that, whoever pays for this sudden legislated increase in the unit cost of labour, it is not them. Minimizing labour costs, after all — getting by with as few employees as they possibly can — is what profit-maximizing employers do 24 hours a day. It is practically all they think about.

And so it could have been no surprise to anyone when a number of employers — Tim Horton’s was singled out for scorn, but only because the Ontario premier saw political advantage in it — began taking steps to offset the increase in hourly wages: in the initial stages, by cutting back on hours worked, or by reducing other benefits. Over the longer haul, they will implement other measures, with equal predictability: substituting machinery for labour, where possible; in some cases raising prices, though minimum-wage workers are typically employed in intensely competitive, low-margin businesses where there is little scope for price increases.