the editor I love The Wall Street Journal
op-ed page when on the Sunday talk shows this weekend to talk about
Seattle recently raising their minimum wage to the
highest in the country which is fifteen dollars an hour
so listen to his robot all love that policy
I call this the argument from narcissism
when you raise the cost of labor you just cost price a lot of people
on the labor market particularly the young police killed
teenagers people who want to go in 10 start on that get on that basic
bottom rung of the economic ladder and move up ok I work for the minimum wage
two bucks an hour back in the 70s I had jobs that
yet what did I learn I'm gonna show up on time I was certain skills by Mark I
didn't wanna make
the minimum wage for the rest of my life try to get an education yet you see what
I call that the
argument from narcissism it's all about him I heard this argument so many times
before Bill O'Reilly makes the same argument
well you know when I started out I was working a minimum wage job for one
summer before my dad got an internship somewhere and i ended up
working my way up the company the idea is because
I had a minimum wage job and work my way
up everybody should work their way up from a minimum wage job
so what should be really really shitty pay you notice
d gigantic fallacy in that argument
not everybody
is gonna work their way up and you wouldn't want to everybody to work their
way up from a minimum wage job
why be cuz we absolutely need
minimum-wage workers in the country in the sense that we need people to do
those jobs
it everybody worked their way up not everybody to be a manager in economy can
function if everybody's a manager
worth everybody's a CEO the nobody's there to do the
actual work it's amazing that they don't peace these things together
so the one to blame people and say you know what you should work your way up
its on you buddy
but then they don't take their argument to its logical conclusion which is that
even if everybody in the country woke up tomorrow indeed
exactly what you're saying the economy will fall apart the country would exist
we go into a depression because again we need people to do those jobs
so what progressives are saying and what rational people are saying is
here's an idea how about since we know that those people have to exist to do
those jobs
we at least pay them enough so that they can live yeah I know where
were crazy right that's a crazy idea if you work a full time job you should make
enough money to survive
without having to run to Medicaid and food stamps to get by
and also their book their entire belief system
is this massive contradiction because they say the same time is this
were in favor small-government okay but we wait you would get smaller government
if you raise the minimum wage
because then food stamps and Medicaid those programs which shrank because less
people would need to go to them
because they be getting enough money from the job that they're working at
so they have a massive contradiction they say no we want to cut
Medicaid and food stamps and the other social safety net programs and we also
don't want to raise the minimum wage
well then people can live dipshit we gonna do we are due to have their kids
starving middle the street are you want to do
but they don't think it through and if they did they get there they might not
even care
but that's why the argument is so disingenuous it's all ridiculous
I think about the other point that they always make well when you raise the cost
of labor if you raise the minimum wage what you're doing is your pricing other
workers at the market
think about how dumb that is think about how done that is because you know what
that means
he saying well obviously full-employment
is the number one thing we should care about this the number one economic
indicated that we should care about is it really is it really
because you know we can achieve full-employment tomorrow
we have 0 percent unemployment tomorrow
well how do you do that Kyle a little thing called slavery
true you get your percent unemployment if you have slavery
because everybody is not working who's unemployed go work for free
is your percent unemployment and again that's his argument is
well look your pricing people at the market you know if you raise the minimum
wage
yeah you know in Bangladesh they are they're taking your advice
they're saying look we don't want to but have people not working
so pay everybody like two bucks actually two bucks probably a lot for that area
pay everybody like 57 cents
you know and then a lot of people work for no money whatsoever
I mean it's just their such bad arguments man
there's such bad arguments you know and then also
what was he saying on 1960 the nineteen seventies or whatever I was making this
amount of money per hour with the minimum wage
mother fucker the 1968 minimum wage
would be equal in today's dollars to about ten dollars and forty cents an
hour
okay so today the minimum wage is worth
less than it was in nineteen sixty-eight so without even realizing it you're
arguing to raise the minimum wage
they're just so silly if you were to change minimum wage to productivity in
about twenty two dollars an hour right now
okay if you were to just making a living wage would be about twelve dollars an
hour right now
look it's not that hard in people are in on reasonable
if you give them a little bit of a boost to the point where they're making a
living wage
bilby happy as hell but they're even against that
minimum minimum change in the right direction
and it's gross and it's disingenuous and it's totally on intellectual to the
point being ridiculous