Guess we should be thanking Trump for coming out so publicly. Of course, he’s been there all along. And surely some have seen him for what he is. But most Americans vaguely thought of him as simply a highly successful businessman: a man who rose to the top based on skill and expertise, someone who deserved the bounty he raked in from his many enterprises.
He has exposed himself (more than the statue in Union Square could ever do). We now clearly see the man behind the glitz.
But I digress… This is not about how delusional, narcissistic, greedy, heartless, and now clearly foolish Trump is. He’s been publicly proving that daily for more than a year. This is about the minimum wage, and why, thanks to Trump, it will be much easier to destroy the myth.
Nick Hanauer has been writing again, and he has something worth reading on the minimum wage. He calls the argument against increasing the minimum wage what it is: A Threat, Not a Theory.
He cites a recent study that assessed the impact of historical increases in the federal minimum wage.
In a first-of-its-kind study, economist William Lester from the University of North Carolina, in cooperation with researchers from the National Employment Law Project, pored over employment data from every federal increase since the minimum wage was first established, making “simple before-and-after comparisons of job growth trends twelve months after each minimum-wage increase.” And the paper’s title says it all: “Raise Wages, Kill Jobs? Seven Decades of Historical Data Finds No Correlation Between Minimum Wage Increases and Employment Levels.”
The results were clear: Of the nearly two dozen federal minimum wage hikes since 1938, total year-over-year employment actually increased 68 percent of the time. In those industries most affected by the minimum wage, employment increases were even more common: Fully 73 percent of the time in the retail sector, and 82 percent in low-wage leisure and hospitality.
His most powerful point comes when he explains the thinking of someone running a business, someone who wants to maximize his own profits.
The claim that if wages go up, jobs go down isn’t a description of reality at all. Nor, in my opinion, does it reflect legitimate economics. It is a negotiating strategy. It is a scam, a con job, a threat—more precisely, it is an intimidation tactic masquerading as a legitimate economic theory.
A year ago many Americans might have demurred at the idea that most upstanding business leaders would stoop to such tactics. Now, after 14 months of in-your-face Trump exposure, up close and personal, I think we’re all ready to believe what Hanauer offers.
So, maybe it is time to be thankful for what Trump has brought our nation — a much more realistic picture of who is up there, who is raking in the big bucks while putting the screws to, well, anyone who isn’t able to defend themselves.
I highly recommend reading Hanauer's full article. Here is one other tidbit to whet your appetite:
The two cornerstones of trickle-down economics are:
- If wages for the poor go up, employment goes down; and
- If taxes on the rich go up, employment goes down.
But this isn’t a scientific theory or a law of nature that describes the world in any empirically verifiable way. This is a threat—a moral claim aimed at social control. As such, it is repeated again and again and again, not because it is true, or because the powerful believe it to be true (although some might—self-deception can be a soothing psychic balm). The rich and the powerful relentlessly repeat this claim because if they can persuade the poor and the weak to believe it, it will be very advantageous to the powerful and the rich.
(emphasis mine)