Beck allowed misinformation on minimum wage hike
SUMMARY: On his CNN program, Glenn Beck allowed the Cato
Institute's James Dorn to repeat a much-circulated myth that the minimum
wage increase proposal would benefit "typically your part-time ... young workers that
are making minimum wage," adding that [m]ost of these workers are in
families that have incomes in the middle income or even higher middle-income
families."
On the January 9 edition of his CNN Headline News program, Glenn Beck called a Democratic proposal to raise the federal minimum wage from $5.15 per hour to $7.25 per hour "nothing but a political issue" and allowed James A. Dorn, vice president for Academic Affairs at the Cato Institute, to repeat a much-circulated myth that the proposal would benefit "typically your part-time ... young workers that are making minimum wage." Dorn added that "[m]ost of these workers are in families that have incomes in the middle income or even higher middle-income families." But by noting only those who are currently "making minimum wage," Dorn ignored those earning more than $5.15 per hour but less than $7.25 per hour whose wages will also increase if the Democratic proposal is adopted. As Media Matters for America has noted (here and here), according to an Economic Policy Institute briefing paper, an "[a]nalysis of the 2005 Current Population Survey reveals that the workers potentially affected by a minimum wage increase are mainly adults who typically work full time and provide significant income to their families."
While Dorn did not specify what he meant by "young workers," according to EPI, a majority -- 71 percent -- of those earning less than $7.25 are age 20 or over. Also, while 43 percent of those earning less than $7.25 are full-time (at least 35 hours a week) workers, according to EPI, when those workers earning more than $7.25 but likely to be subject to "spillover effects" are factored in, 53 percent of those who would be affected by the Democratic proposal are full-time workers.
Earlier in his "Real Story" segment, Beck had characterized the view of supporters of the minimum wage increase as "anyone who votes against it automatically hates poor people, wants to starve their children to death" and compared the minimum wage proposal to global warming because "[y]ou can't actually ask commonsense questions about global warming and whether humans are responsible for it, because once you do -- oh, you're just a hatemonger who wants all those polar bears and penguins to die."
From the January 9 edition of CNN Headline News' Glenn Beck:
BECK: Yeah. Yeah, that's right. The minimum wage on the docket tomorrow, because anyone who votes against it automatically hates poor people, wants to starve their children to death. That's the message that always seems to get sent, isn't it?
Well, here's the real story. The real story is that message is wrong. The minimum wage has become nothing but a political issue and, because of that, all logic just gets thrown right out the window completely. Apparently, common sense and compassion can't mix.
It's just like global warming. You can't actually ask commonsense questions about global warming and whether humans are responsible for it, because once you do -- oh, you're just a hatemonger who wants all those polar bears and penguins to die.
[...]
BECK: Right, but who's making it? Who is the person that is making minimum wage? And how long do they make it?
DORN: These are typically your part-time, you know, young workers that are making minimum wage. Most of these workers are in families that have incomes in the middle income or even higher middle-income families.
Very few people in poverty with families are making the minimum wage, maybe 15 percent of earners, and these are the -- exactly the people who will be hurt the most by an increase in the minimum wage, the lowest-skilled workers in poverty families.
Beck's stats and info seem to come from his nether regions...
his nether regions would be much more intelligent than his upper regions.
THANK YOU. njguy93@yahoo.com
When invoking the phrase "minimum wage", Beck wants you to envision some pimply faced kid in a paper hat flipping burgers and doling out fries, not a 25 year old with two kids and bills to pay. You MUST sympathize for the poor, poor food store chains that will (sob!) have to pay more money to the unfortunate slobs who end up working there, for I truly doubt anyone aspires to a career under the auspices of Ronald McDonald’s Golden Arches. Working in the shadow of the Hamburglar is not on anyone’s radar, but hey, it happens, even to educated people.
Working in the shadow of the Hamburglar is not on anyone’s radar, but hey, it happens, even to educated people.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
By educated, you're telling me that folks with Bachelor's and Master's degrees are flipping burgers? Spare me. I've never seen a Mc D's name tag that had PhD on it. It does not happen.
Sorry, DAVE, but yes, it DOES happen, to a friend of mine. No, he wasn't flipping burgers at McD's, but when he couldn't find a job as a teacher, he did work for minimum wage plus tips as a waiter, which is no picnic. Then there's a classmate of mine, from HS, who also had a college degree and couldn't find work in his field, Employee Relations. Guess where I saw him working? At McD's.
So that makes at least two people with an education working for minimum wage. Pretty much deflates your faulty extreme assertion argument, don't it?
and I flipped burgers at Mickied's this past summer...enlightening, I assure you
One of the great myths about raising the minimum wage is that employers will respond by firing employees.
The fallacy here is that this presumes companies are overburdened with workers, and can dispense with them at will.
Not any more-- remember the days when you'd go into a department store and find cash registers in every division? That's ancient history.
So let them fire away: they won't have anyone to do the work. That's why it's a phony threat, Tommy and others.
Now, both sides do agree that the earned income tax credit is the better way to do what is intended via minimum wage because eitc really does only benifit poor workers. However, most studies show little to no correlation between an increase in minimum wage and unemployment. Take what happened in florida:
[link to www.risep-fiu.org]
get that? Florida had a stronger economy and actually increased employment over previous years after raising their minimum wage. Dang those facts!
please do not let your obsession with 'facts' get in the way of Beck's constitutional right to verbalize his 'beliefs'... for remember, this country was founded on 'beliefs' and any 'facts' that interfere with that will be not be tolerated with (think lawsuit, or prison)...
thank you for your understanding,
Certainly) N(ot) N(ews)..
to deal with the poor is to deny they exist!
Yet Congress, in the past, voted against raising the minimum wage but voted FOR increasing their own salaries. Why can't we raise it, just once?
then it can't cost that much. Therefore, why bother opposing it?
[link to www.bls.gov]
Hmmm seems about 25% of the people receiving minimum wage are age 16 - 19. This does not take into account the family earnings of these teenagers. So saying these jobs go to mostly teenagers in middle class families is uh. FALSE!
(1) If I had to ask most people who is more "poor," an unemployed person, or a minimum wage worker, most people would say that the unemployed worker is worse off.
(2) When the minimum wage increases, companies who rarely have large pots of cash lying around (i.e. small businesses), can no longer afford to pay as many workers as they once did. Consequently, business owners fire the lowest paid workers, don't hire more workers, and increase prices of their goods or services to compensate for the increase in wages.
(3) While the minimum wage sounds like a great idea -- "How can anyone make a living on $5.00 an hour?" The "poor" are much worse off with a Federal minimum wage increase.
(4) The solution is to have States dictate their own minimum wage. This is a better solution because the cost of goods or services are not unform throughout our Nation. While some people argue that this creates a "race to the bottom" by the States, that clearly hasn't happened in New York, California, and other States who have higher minimum wages than the National rate.
While the minimum wage is a highly emotional issue, the facts are that it helps the people who receive a minimum wage at the expense of those who are trying to make it onto the payrolls.
1. You are right but you assume that the minimum wage causes vast unemployment. As Snoopy has pointed out earlier other states have seen an increase in their local economy after a minimum wage increase. Can you show another study that disputes this?
2. I don't see why a small business owner would fire lower paid workers and increase the costs of their goods. Normally it would be one or the other. You are also assuming the owner has the ability to fire the lower wage workers. There could be a scenario where the owner does a little of each but if the economy improves the should allow these workers to find other jobs at companies that are growing.
3. You are just retyping your first point. Please show one study where the poor become poorer because of a minimum wage increase.
4. The states already do dictate their own minimum wages and they will have a right to do so as long as it is at or above the new federal level. In fact even when the federal increase begins many states will be above that level.
The last time the govt raised the minimum wage was 1996. During that time the number of poor decreased. Please show proof that the minimum wage hurts the poor.
I will admit that some small business owners may have a harder time adjusting. However, as more people in the lower classes have money they will create more spending which will create more opportunities for the smaller businesses.
1. One of many possibilities is that Florida had a huge influx of wealthy retirees moving into the State. As a result, there is an increase in demand for labor overall because more people are there to spend money. This is also a potential reason for the economy doing well in Florida overall. A more nefarious possibility is that businesses just couldn’t afford the minimum wage and hired illegal aliens under the table, which led to a drastic increase in the economy (I’m partly joking – don’t send comments to the last sentence).
2. Well, most businesses are not in business to provide jobs for people; they are in business to make money. They hire workers when they can’t perform all the work they need to perform by themselves. When the minimum wage forces businesses to pay workers more, the businesses still need the labor to perform the work, but can’t afford to pay them. So, they keep only the workers they need to get buy (AKA fire the workers on the lower rung). In order to stay in business or make a profit, which is the only reason to work so hard in the first place, businesses also raise the price to compensate.
Moreover, when regulations are low, facilitating businesses to enter the market, competition ensues. With competition, businesses want to attract consumers by a lowering their prices. The lower prices = a lower cost of living. This lower cost of living = increase in purchasing power for the poor.
3. Wait, maybe I wasn’t clear enough…this is so simple that you don’t need a study. Just use common sense. People who don’t have a job are worse off than people who do.
4. Yes, but some states would like to lower the minimum wage, but can’t because of the Federal minimum wage.
The poor decreased because of TANF and the internet bubble in 1996 as well as other reasons unrelated to the minimum wage.
the report on florida was done specifically to see if there was a correlation between the recent wage increase and the improvement in florida's economy. The results said the wage increase was directly responsible for the economic turn around. No guessing on why, the report says why.
1 Another possibility is that Gold began raining from heaven. If you can show either of these things actually happened you MIGHT have a point.
2 And according to THIS scenario they already had employees they didnt need and had just hired out of the goodness of their hearts. As for your lowering cost scenario, I love the way that worked out, you know how when GM began making their cars in Mexico and labor costs plumetted they lowered the cost of those cars so much, wait, that didnt happen, because busniesses base the cost of thier products on what they can get, not what they cost to make.
3 True enough and when you can SHOW rather than CLAIM that depsite all the studies that show otherwise, that despite the FACT that when minimum wage was at its highest in constant dollars unemployment was about 2% despite all evidence to the contrary there is a significant increase in unemployment among the poor when the minimum wage is increase that is the beggining of a point. Instead we are supposed to take this argument on FAITH despite the evidnece to the contrary apparantly out of pity that it is the only argument you have.
because apprantly making more money had no impact on the poor. Certainly there may have been other reasons but your claim was that the minimum wage hike HURT the poor, I think it fairly relevant that it didnt hurt them the last time we did it.
By which I mean I see a lot of people making the claim and no one backing it up, to be a real argument against the minimum wage or even more ridiculous that a minimum wage boost actually hurts the poor. Not only would it have to be shown that people are actually losing their jobs in significant numbers but that they then couldnt get another minimum wage job for a significant amount of time. I mean even if they did lose a MW job on Monday if they got another one on Friday with the minimum wage higher it would be a net gain for them. The MW jobs do seem to be pretty easy to get. So IF they could show a significant amount of people losing these jobs and not being able to get others, despite most evidence NOT showing a significant increase in unemployment the next step would be to look at how many were helped and how much were they helped vs how many were hurt and how badly were they hurt. Next we can get a rationale from conservatives how curing cancer hurts cancer patients and how low soup kitchens actually harm the hungry. It just gets ridiculous when cons embark on their favorite snipe hunt, the philosophical explanation about how selfishness and greed are actually the highest human endeavor and the epitome of social responsibility. The Holy Grail of conservative Philosophy. I know it will show up any day.
More pay means more taxes. You'd think both sides of the isle would be on board with this.
Also, on a 2,000 hr/yr estimate, I'm not clear how the povern suffer from an annual income increase from 10.3K to 14.5K. That's a 40% increase. Is the reasoning that goods and services will have to increase by at 40% to compensate for the wage increase? That seems extreme.
Great article in the New York Times today about the effect of the minimum wage in Washington, which has the highest one in the country. [link to www.nytimes.com]
And it will stay that way, since it gets adjusted for inflation every year. (side note: I'm proud to have been a part of making that happen, as I lived in Seattle when this measure was put on the ballot and voted yes on it)
After years of great economic benefit from it, the business community that largely fought the measure have changed their tune and have admitted that it has been great for the economy of the state. The predictions of jobs going to Idaho turned out to be false and, as the article points out, pretty much the opposite has happened, with businesses in Idaho border towns raising their wages becasue no one wants to work a minimum wage job in Idaho when they can go a few miles to Washington and make $3/hour more.
One of the strongest economies in the entire country, and the minimum wage goes up EVERY SINGLE YEAR!
Washington added nearly 90,000 jobs last year alone.
When businesses offer higher wages, without Government force, more workers want to work there. This leads other businesses to increase their wages as well. What is new about this? All that is happening here is that the Government is forcing companies in one region to up their wages? Government force is wrong. I have no problem with companies voluntarily raising wages to attract more workers. But, having the Government do it with force hurts the smallest businesses and increases unemployment. Again...I've read the articles that all you people sent me w/ your studies. Correlation does not equal causation. Moreover, look at who funded the studies...I did. They have a vested interest in the outcome b/c Unions use the minimum wage as a bargaining tool.
still a resident of Washington or did you leave with Boeing Headquarters and the asparagus industry? I don't have a problem with the WA minimum wage except for the fact it is government mandated. How many of those 90,000 jobs are minimum wage jobs? If, as I expect, very few are, then the minimum wage rate has had minimal impact on the economy, except that I notice I have to wait a little longer for service on the rare occassions that I visit the Golden Arches (or similar fast food places). I have also noticed that a couple of businesses with more than one outlet in the area have cut back to a single outlet so that the family can handle rather than rely on "hired" help.
No I don't live in WA anymore, but I never worked for Boeing or the asparagus undustry. Boeing didn't move their factory to Chicago, just their 500 or so front office jobs. Boeing is still a huge employer in the state. The economy had nothing to do with why I moved away.
The point of the article link was to show that raising the minimum wage does not hurt the economy or cost jobs. And anyone making that argument is foolish. The fact that 90,000 jobs were created in WA last year proves that, and wether or not they are minimum wage jobs is irrelevant to the conversation.
And your supposed observation that there are less fast food restaurants in WA because of a minimum wage increase is not born out by the facts. The fact that job growth is robust in WA quashes that little made-up "observation."
What the facts show, and have always shown, is that minimum wage increases always help the economy. And all of the anecdotal evidence and theories offered up by the right-wing won't change that.