-By Gary Krasner
I came across Michael Tomasky’s recent article, “Jeb Bush’s Minimum Wage Radicalism.”
It’s a good example of liberal stupidity because one can realize it without reading studies and guessing if the study is fraudulent or deficient in some way, which is often one or the other.
First, he wastes two paragraphs saying he likes the moderate positions of moderate republicans. Why? Because he’s a liberal democrat. Oh, thanks for clearing that up, and for wasting my time with obvious “mysteries.”
Having made the claim that moderates in the republican party will help the political discourse, he neglects to demonstrate that, even with an example. One suspects this idiot means that there would be less debate. Which means he believes debate is a bad thing. All that proves is that he’s a liberal, which we already know!
Next, he says he favors minimum wage laws. Why? Because it makes workers happy. Oh, but what about employers? He’s a liberal, so he thinks employers have a huge chest full of money in the backroom which they can pay employees.
Trust me, they don’t. I know small businesses who live week to week, sometimes breaking even, or losing money, after payroll is done. Some take out loans just to meet payroll.
Tomasky lauds companies like WalMart, McDonald’s and Target for increasing wages without force of law (i.e. increase in minimum wage). Apparently he doesn’t understand that these megastores do things to wipe out the competition of local mom and pop stores. Increasing wages is one way. Lobbying for the Obamacare business mandates is another. Anything that government can do to increase the cost of doing business if fine by them. Small businesses with narrow margins and less cash reserves can’t survive the increased costs of such government mandates, or even the costs of complying with the regulations that come with them. Tomasky is clueless to this.
He then states that he favors the FEDERAL minimum wage law. But the difference in standard of living in New York City compared to Albuquerque, New Mexico makes a federal minimum wage rate patently absurd. Tomasky doesn’t consider that counterpoint. But then that’s why liberals reside in the safety of their echo chambers.
Tomasky apparently wanted to report that Jeb Bush supports state minimum wage laws, but not the federal one. The difference in cost of living between NYC and upstate Watertown might also make that idea similarly absurd, but he doesn’t mention that. He just wanted to commend Jeb Bush for his moderation.
Then Tomasky denies that entry-level jobs disappear when government raises minimum wage. He writes, “An increase was passed in 1996. Some conservative economists continued to spoon out the “job-killer” Kool-Aid, as indeed they still do, but evidence continues to support the idea that there is no serious job-killing effect.”
But he’s wrong. It does kill jobs. They disappear because some businesses cannot meet the payroll for the higher wages. No profits, or negative profits, eventually means no business.
The reason he thinks they don’t is because he cites a study that’s fraudulent. It looks solely at the unemployment rate following minimum wage hikes. But the “unemployment rate” is a comparison of the number of people actively seeking employment, divided by the total labor force. But the total labor force is a function of the number of available jobs. So the way it works is that because of a mandate to increase wages, and therefore a company is forced to go out of business, or is forced to eliminate entry-level jobs, there are fewer available jobs registered in the market, and that makes the unemployment rate go down.
In other words, when the number of available jobs declines, so does the unemployment rate. The point is that the unemployment rate, because of the way it’s calculated, is a poor indicator of “employment” in the US, let alone the health of the economy and business. Tomasky doesn’t seem to realize this.
But I promised you didn’t need to know complex stuff like that. So consider this thought experiment (warning: if you’re a liberal, this thought experiment requires rational thought): Ask yourself why Democrats ask for such meager increases in minimum wage, usually in election years when such demagoguery has the most effect. If increasing people’s wages was the answer to all ills, why not propose that wages be increased to $50 or $100 per hour? They don’t propose it, and there’s your proof—-proof that Democrats fully realize that jobs disappear when minimum wage is increased. They realize that economics is really about difficult trade-offs, yet they rely on the greed of the working public to believe that business owners are the greedy ones.
It’s anyone’s guess what was Tomasky’s point in writing this column. To boost Jeb Bush’s poll numbers? Whatever it was, he failed miserably to make it.