There are an astounding number of "everybody knows" myths that I have to refute in discussions on all kinds of topics.

An example:

On another board, I dropped into a raging discussion on minimum wage and posted the fact that out of all workers who are paid by the hour, slightly less than 3 percent are paid minimum wage or less. A quarter of those are teenagers, and half under the age of 25.

This works out to less than 2 percent of all payroll employees.

There are other eye-openers in that document too. Worth looking over.

If you were to ask the average man on the street how many workers in America worked for minimum wage, what do you think his off-the-cuff answer would be? When someone pops up with the famous "family of four living on minimum wage," how many families is he really talking about?

Now, the fact that so few people are paid national minimum wage or lower does not necessarily mean that it's all market-driven. There are, of course, state minimum wages that are higher than the national, and a really good study would have to go through them all and ask, "how many people are paid state minimum wages or lower?"

this map shows that there are some states (shown in green) where the minimum wage is in fact higher than the Federal, including the highly populated California and Illinois. Now we get into some math, but it seems like the percentage wouldn't get much higher than the original 3 percent.

Beyond this, I don't do any more research for free.