Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

SilverSurfer, John Stossel is a wrong-headed liar .. ever hear of a research/fact check?

David Sirota Kicks Stossel Ass

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywDuCEIeHnM

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Debating A Pathological Liar on CNBC
David Sirota Posted: June 17, 2006 08:56 AM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/debating-a-pathological-l_b_23220.html

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National Restaurant Association

Says Oregon’s high minimum wage is the reason why "by 2011, Oregon's restaurants employed an average of only 13.8 workers, or 2.6 fewer employees than they did before the state's minimum wage began rising above the federal level in 1997."

Melvin Sickler on Thursday, March 14th, 2013 in a U.S. Senate hearing

Has Oregon's higher minimum wage hurt our restaurant industry?



Melvin "Mel" Sickler, a representative of the National Restaurant Association, recently told a U.S. Senate committee to put the brakes on a bill that would increase the federal minimum wage and tie it to inflation.

Why? Boosting the hourly minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 would reduce the number of jobs in the food service industry, Sickler said.

[...]

The ruling: Sickler wants to connect the shrinking size of restaurants on average in Oregon to the state’s minimum wage being higher than the federal minimum. In a vacuum, his data seem to suggest that link.

But when we looked at data from other states, the correlation just didn’t work. And putting employment and the number of restaurants into context, as Lehner did, we can see that restaurant jobs rise and fall with the health of the national economy, not the state’s minimum wage. Oregon’s per capita restaurant employment is higher than the national average, in spite of having a higher minimum wage.

We rate the statement False.

http://www.politifact.com/oregon/statements/2013/apr/13/melvin-sickler/has-oregons-higher-minimum-wage-hurt-our-restauran/

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The Most Rigorous Research Shows Minimum Wage Increases Do Not Reduce Employment

The opinion of the economics profession on the impact of the minimum wage has shifted significantly over the past fifteen years. Today, the most rigorous research shows little evidence of job reductions from a higher minimum wage. Indicative is a 2013 survey .. http://www.igmchicago.org/igm-economic-experts-panel/poll-results?SurveyID=SV_br0IEq5a9E77NMV .. by the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business in which leading economists agreed by a nearly 4 to 1 margin that the benefits of raising and indexing the minimum wage outweigh the costs.

[SS, in your video Stossel said, '2/3 of labor law [OOPS! he corrected himself as
i blinked] economic experts say a higher minimum wage kills jobs' .. Stossel is a liar]

This page reviews the most widely-cited and influential studies on the impact of minimum wage increases on employment, and examines the primary reasons why low-wage employers can afford higher wages today.



Source: Doucougliagos and Stanely, “Publication Selection Bias in Minimum Wage Research? A Meta-Regression Analysis,” British Journal of Industrial Relations, 2009. (with NELP annotations) Source .. http://ideas.repec.org/p/dkn/econwp/eco_2008_14.html

Study: Why Does the Minimum Wage Have No Discernible Effect on Employment? .. http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/min-wage-2013-02.pdf .. (2013)

Summary: Reviews the past two decades of research on the impact of minimum wage increases on employment: this study concludes that the weight of the evidence points to little or no effect of minimum wage increases on job growth. The study also finds that a review of the minimum wage literature commonly cited by minimum wage opponents is flawed because it is subjective, relies in large part on studies of wage increases in foreign countries, and fails to consider the most sophisticated and recent minimum wage studies.

Paul Krugman, Princeton University, February 2013: “Now, you might argue that even if the current minimum wage seems low, raising it would cost jobs. But there’s evidence on that question — lots and lots of evidence, because the minimum wage is one of the most studied issues in all of economics. U.S. experience, it turns out, offers many ‘natural experiments’ here, in which one state raises its minimum wage while others do not. And while there are dissenters, as there always are, the great preponderance of the evidence from these natural experiments points to little if any negative effect .. http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/min-wage-2013-02.pdf .. of minimum wage increases on employment.” (Source .. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/18/opinion/krugman-raise-that-wage.html?_r=0 )

Bloomberg News, April 2012: "[A] wave of new economic research is disproving those arguments about job losses and youth employment. Previous studies tended not to control for regional economic trends that were already affecting employment levels, such as a manufacturing-dependent state that was shedding jobs. The new research looks at micro-level employment patterns for a more accurate employment picture. The studies find minimum-wage increases even provide an economic boost, albeit a small one, as strapped workers immediately spend their raises.” (Source .. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-16/u-s-minimum-wage-lower-than-in-lbj-era-needs-a-raise.html )

.. much more .. http://www.raisetheminimumwage.com/pages/job-loss

Stossel ignores facts which do not support his position, that makes him a liar.

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Raising minimum wage would create jobs

August 4, 2013 By Fred Clark 233 Comments

Here’s Felix Salmon, endorsing the doubling of the minimum wage.
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/06/20/the-minimum-wage-stimulus/

Yeah, that’s right: doubling — from a poverty-level $7.25/hour to a living wage of $15/hour. Salmon is seconding the suggestion by millionaire capitalist Nick Hanauer .. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-19/the-capitalist-s-case-for-a-15-minimum-wage.html , who points out that “If the minimum wage had simply tracked U.S. productivity gains since 1968, it would be $21.72 an hour — three times what it is now.”

.. more .. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2013/08/04/raising-minimum-wage-would-create-jobs/

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John Stossel’s poor logic on minimum wages and jobs

06:50 AM - July 30, 2013

Fox host fails to explain away Australia’s high wages and low unemployment

By Ryan Chittum

Fox Business’s John Stossel is a long-time opponent of the minimum wage.

I don’t mean he opposes raising the minimum wage, something that puts him decidedly out of the mainstream .. http://www.gallup.com/poll/160913/back-raising-minimum-wage.aspx . I mean he opposes any minimum wage, which puts him roughly in Ayn Rand/WSJ editorial page territory.

The idea being that a minimum wage causes mass unemployment, particularly amongst young and/or unskilled workers who would be profitable employees at $5.25 an hour, say, but who aren’t at $7.25.

The problem for this argument, beyond the raft of research .. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-07-11/unemployment-figures-for-june/4813876 .. that shows it isn’t true, is the real-world examples that contradict it.

In Australia, for instance, the minimum wage is more than twice ours, at $15 an hour (adjusted for exchange rates). But the unemployment rate there is just 5.7 percent .. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-07-11/unemployment-figures-for-june/4813876 — nearly two full percentage points less than it is here.

Ah, “but statists ignore the details,” says Stossel, in a piece .. http://www.foxbusiness.com/on-air/stossel/blog/2012/07/13/australian-minimum-wage-myth .. headlined “The Australian Minimum Wage Myth”:

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Most people who earn minimum wage are young, unskilled workers. How are they doing in Australia?

In June, Australia’s unemployment rate for workers age 15 to 19 was 16.5%.
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If that seems like a compelling argument, note that Stossel fails to report what the American youth unemployment rate is: 24 percent. Youth unemployment is always much higher than adult unemployment, for a variety of reasons .. http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1984/10/art4full.pdf :



One thing the anti-labor types like Stossel never imagine is that higher wages incentivize work and lower wages disincentivize it. I recall my own miserable days as a teen worker making $4.25 an hour at hamburger joints, grocery stores, and for three glorious days—Chuck E. Cheese. A few days in, after visualizing my dickhead boss flicking me a quarter every five minutes (roughly my take-home rate) to shovel up cheeseburgers, I realized my youth was better spent elsewhere.

But when I got a job in the lucrative newspaper industry (those were the days!) helping deliver a commercial route, the $8 or $10 an hour I netted made the 2:30 a.m. start times and 100-degree Oklahoma summers spent in the back of a truck covered in ink and news dust quite tolerable.

Unlike us, though, Australia’s minimum wage is tiered by age, something Stossel completely misses:



You’d think, using Stossel’s logic, that since the minimum wage for 16-19 year olds ranges from $7.10 an hour (U.S. dollars) to $12.38 an hour, the kids’ unemployment rate would be lower than the adults’.

Stossel also says Australia’s unions support higher minimum wages because it “reduces competition from unskilled labor.” In other words, those dastardly unions want poor, young kids out of work!

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When the Wall Street Journal reported the minimum wage increase in Australia, it called the law “a victory for unions.” But that seems strange because union workers normally make more than minimum wage.

But it is a victory for unions because union bosses know that raising the minimum wage reduces competition from unskilled labor. Union support for minimum wage laws is entirely self-serving.
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Stossel doesn’t understand that unions want higher minimum wages because they put upward pressure on wages for union workers. It trickles up, so to speak.

http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/stossels_poor_logic_on_minimum.php

See also:

3Saints, the key is DEMAND, not fairness... [Nick Hanauer link also inside]
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=93467300

INEQUALITY! .. Robert Shiller on winning the Nobel rang alarm bells re INEQUALITY
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=93126873

Yakka! - Higher minimum wage deal would not kill America

The Cost of Living: Australia and the US Compared
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=84726722

.. also in that one ..

Five reasons why Obama is right to push for a higher minimum wage
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=84686053

Welcome to John Stossel’s future: a dystopia so uniquely terrifying,
neither Orwell’s nor Huxley’s darkest previsions anticipated it.
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=84622375

The Trader Joe's Lesson: How to Pay a Living Wage and Still Make Money in Retail
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=95510036