http://twitter.com/#!/HuffPostBiz/status/362280202958671872

As part of the fast food worker strike today, the Huffington Post released an article citing a study claiming that if wages were doubled, the cost of food at McDonald’s would only increase by 17%, or 65 cents for a Big Mac. This immediately caught fire on social media and in the MSM as liberals love to harangue successful corporations.

http://twitter.com/#!/KrauseForIowa/status/362398449464913920
http://twitter.com/#!/thinkprogress/status/362354619252350976

It’s an all-caps “FACT” because ThinkProgress says so!

Not everyone, however, was so easily persuaded:

http://twitter.com/#!/grivno/status/362356981920575488

Eventually Huffington Post issued a rather embarrassing correction:

http://twitter.com/#!/chasboots/status/362362720248532994

The student’s scribblings have not been published in any of the top-tier economics journals (or anywhere else as far as we can tell), though the Huffpo article included an explanation about how Morelix arrived at his findings. Blogger Tom Maguire dismantled the analysis and found that a closer calculation would be a 26% increase in prices. Furthermore, he raises caveats about the elasticity of demand, and asks whether labor costs at franchises are similar to those at corporate-owned restaurants.

In short, it’s not as easy as Morelix and Huffpo made it sound, but that won’t matter to the mindless liberals who retweet the misleading “FACT” as truth in order to further their leftist agenda.

Read more: http://twitchy.com/2013/07/31/widely-cited-study-of-mcdonalds-wages-by-researcher-was-written-by-an-undergrad/