If there was ever any doubt that Faux Noise is the GOP Reichsministry of Propaganda, this should settle it.
Back in July, when a scheduled increase in the minimum wage from $6.55 to $7.25 per hour was about to take place, Fox News ran a segment examining how “the hike will hurt,” joining a media chorus about the supposed detrimental effect the increase would have on business hiring.
Now, with its Republican-inspired “Where are the jobs?” campaign in full swing, Fox has gone “on the job hunt” with a “new” idea for increasing employment: cutting the minimum wage. Jumping off from an op-ed by Washington Post editorial board member Charles Lane, Fox yesterday ran a handful of segments on the same basic premise — cutting the minimum wage may be the answer to the jobs dilemma. Watch a compilation:
Fox’s anchors seemed very pleased to have stumbled onto this line of thought. Of course, none of the anchors mention that almost all of the economic research on the subject shows that the minimum wage has little to no effect [pdf] on employment. The most well-known researchers on the subject — David Card and Alan Krueger — examined a minimum wage increase in New Jersey, and found that “employment actually expanded in New Jersey relative to Pennsylvania, where the minimum wage was constant.”...
Inserted from <Think Progress>
The motivation here is clear. Every penny not paid to a worker is a penny a millionaire can keep.
5 comments:
this idea has been popularized on the right wing "the market solves all ills" blogs over the past few weeks...these are the same people who say unemployemnt comp creates unemployment by encouraging laziness...the want to end unemployment comp and minimum wage and let the "supply" of low priced labor reach a level where "demand" puts people back to work...
(ie, we eventually compete with the chinese)
Without those pennies, how can the millionaire create jobs for the poor? Why do you want America to fail?
Now they are recycling old ideas - really? I don't think these people have had a new or good idea in their entire lives.
I want that speech of Ted Kennedy's, when they were fighting for the increase that he was so passionate about, played 24 hours a day to all of the Republicans, until they stop with this nonsense. That's my own personal form of torture (since they seem to like that SO much) for them. If you haven't heard it, I will find a link and post it. It made me cry and I think if he wasn't so totally pissed off, he would have cried right there on the Senate floor.
if you follow the links from this link you'll see how seriously this idea is being debated among the econ wonks: Should we cut the minimum wage?
Thanks, RJ. It all comes down to ripping pennies from the poor and middle classes to give them to millionaires.
To quote one of your most vocal readers, Graves, you swine! ;-)
Lisa, what a great idea!
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