Any non-market action will distort market forces. What he means is that the EITC is a softer kind of distortion. Since the EITC is essentially a matching contri

Any non-market action will distort market forces. What he means is that the EITC is a softer kind of distortion. Since the EITC is essentially a matching contribution to the employee's earnings, it still allows decisions about wages to be made at the margin, as opposed to a minimum wage which mandates a hard cutoff.