Logical Fallacies

Poor people should have their welfare cut off, because this will make them work harder. Right now, there is a disease in society, a moral outrage, and that is sloth and laziness. The Bible says that sloth and laziness are sins, but every day we see this in society. We have welfare queens and drug dealers getting welfare paid out of your tax dollars, and if that doesn't get your blood boiling, it should. We just keep the gravy train running.

I can't imagine why anybody would think this is a good idea. I defy anybody to tell me why this makes sense. The bottom line is that the politicians want to raise the minimum wage, keeping these people from pursuing meaningful work in their lives. This is a Christian nation and God does not approve of this type of laziness; He wants people to work hard and be faithful, things that this idea of raising the minimum wage works against.

It keeps people motivated to be poor, because they do not need to work any harder to live a better life. Worse yet, to give these people the money they need to live a better life, we increase costs on business. It's basic economics. Businesses will just have to raise their prices if the minimum wage goes up, and that means inflation for everybody. Your hard earned dollars will buy you less if this policy goes through.

Some folks will try to tell you that the people on minimum wages are just struggling to get by, but I think we all know that welfare queens are out there buying bling with your tax dollars. And the reality is that so many of these minimum wage loafers are immigrants. But what message does this policy send about America? It sends the message that you don't need to work hard to succeed here.

These values are not American, and that means that anybody who supports this policy is not a real American. This policy of raising the minimum wage is just another evil socialist plot to steal your money and give it to lazy people who do not deserve it. It's not American, it's an affront to the Christian values on which this country was founded and it is time to put a stop to this evil. Part II. There are a great many logical fallacies contained in the above argument.

The first is the constant use of kettle logic, wherein multiple inconsistent arguments are used. There is no coherent thread to the argument above, in particular the author does not seem to understand the difference between welfare and the minimum wage. That could be considered a red herring, if it is believed that the minimum wage issue is easier to address than the welfare issue. They certainly are not the same thing but the person making the argument acts as though they are.

But beyond that, the argument lacks coherency and deductive reasoning. It is simply a rant. Beyond that, a wide and healthy variety of logical fallacies were included in this argument. The hypothesis of the argument is that cutting off the welfare benefits of poor people will make them work harder. To prove this, the author of the argument must demonstrate that there is causation between cutting off welfare benefits and motivating people to work harder, and there was no attempt to do that here.

Instead, a barrage of other arguments was presented, containing one fallacy after another. There is an appeal to emotion, in particular outrage, as the author specifically asks the reader to be outraged, and tosses out some random ad hominem attacks ("welfare queens and drug dealers") in order to build that outrage -- never mind the dog whistle stuff. The audience is implored to get their blood boiling. Appealing to emotion is a fallacy, as it does not prove the hypothesis.

The first paragraph ends with "I can't imagine why anybody would think this is a good idea," which is argument from incredulity. Just because the person making the argument does not believe it, does not make something untrue. The last line of the first paragraph is shifting the burden of proof to the audience. This is another fallacy because the burden of proof is always on the person who has presented the hypothesis. The author needs to prove that he or she is right.

Moreover, a conclusion cannot be proven on the basis of absence of evidence -- it needs to be proven on the basis of evidence. The second paragraph brings back the religion theme that is used multiple times in this argument. It does not matter what one's religious beliefs are, the invocation of religion is a logical fallacy because what God wants can neither be proven nor disproven, same as with the existence of God himself.

This makes it a logical fallacy -- your argument cannot rest on something that cannot be proven. Discussing the relationship between inflation and minimum wage is a giant minefield of fallacy. There are a few issues at work. First, if the author of the argument would like to invoke the inflation argument against raising the minimum wage, evidence to support that assertion will need to be presented. In this case it is not.

Second, the premise is not related to the minimum wage anyway, which means that this entire line of reasoning is ignoratio elenchi. That means that regardless of the merits of the minimum wage = inflation line of reasoning, it had nothing to do with the original premise about welfare. It doesn't because minimum wage and welfare are not the same thing, but also that inflation outcomes are not related to the premise about the outcomes on welfare recipients. So the entire line of reasoning needs to be rejected on these grounds.

The third paragraph continues the rant about minimum wage and this entire paragraph could more or less be rejected on these grounds. At this point it is clear that the person making the argument is arguing from a position of ignorance, and is simply looking for an emotional response against any type of helping of the poor -- ok that is a Bulverism but ultimately this author has not proven anything so I'll take that free shot. Again "welfare queens" and "bling" are thrown out there.