It’s interesting that economics is “just a theory” when the left wants to pretend that their interventions won’t have any bad effects, but unquestionably true when they want to use the price system for their own purposes. If they want people to stop smoking, they advocate slapping on high taxes per pack. If they want people to drive less, they want to increase the gasoline tax. Both actions assume that the law of demand is true — that as the cost of buying something increases, people will buy less of it. When the subject is the minimum wage, however, the law of demand is abruptly relegated to the status of mere “theory.”

That’s one of the characteristics of what I call freedomphobia — the underestimation (or more often, complete denial of) the harmful effects of governmental action.