Elizabeth Warren's $22/hr. "Productivity"
Jack E. Kemp
Elizabeth Warren has made a statement that liberals are saying has "been taken out of context." The 1/32 Indian (or is it one thirty-second Indian?) is reported in the Huffington Post to make this argument:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/18/elizabeth-warren-minimum-w...
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) made a case for increasing the minimum wage last week during a Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions hearing, in which she cited a study that suggested the federal minimum wage would have stood at nearly $22 an hour today if it had kept up with increased rates in worker productivity...
"If we started in 1960 and we said that as productivity goes up, that is as workers are producing more, then the minimum wage is going to go up the same.
END OF QUOTE
What's wrong with this picture? Well, it is just that:
1) increases in productivity aren't generally measured in relation to untrained beginners who get the minimum wage. I speak from experience n my college days summer job at a gas station, the first customer I served resulting in me taking pump hose into my hand and squeezing it, shooting out 10 feet of gas onto the ground before I stopped squeezing. I could have been fired right there.
2) Increases in productivity are often linked to spending on more modern computerized machinery. Workers, after all, aren't any more muscular or energetic than they were in the 1960s.
3) If labor costs go up with every expensive investment in new equipment, than a business that employs many workers has a disincentive to buy new equipment. After the initial large outlay of capital, where is the offsetting longterm savings if the cost of labor per hour per person is virtually guaranteed to offset all gains in new machinery? Let's use a simple example from circa 1958. If a cab company has to consider replacing its standard shift cabs that use a clutch with cabs that have automatic drive that a less skilled driver can move quicker through traffic and thus pick up more passengers per hour, where's the incentive to buy new cabs if the company's labor costs will rise for workers operating a now easier-to-drive cab?
Elizabeth Warren isn't stupid in the general sense of the word. She knows my calculations - but she also knows her own calculations in appealing to voters' emotions. She appears to be talking to those low information voters with no experience managing the expenses of a factory or a fried chicken store. That includes most U.S. legislators and just about every undergraduate student in America.
I'm sure Sen. Warren could get an "A" on a paper making this recommendation in a Keyensian Economics class, especially if the professor was at Woodstock and gave extra credit to his students for having attended an Occupy Wall St. rally with him or her. And this $22 an hour idea of Sen. Warren's would really go over big at a late night dorm bull session or with a group of students meeting at her home. But those are hot house Ivory Tower environments. Even if the students had worked at McDonald's in their teens, they now "know" the politically correct answer to give in class and on the campus mall.
Perhaps Sen. Warren also has an equally good idea on how to return the purchasing power of the U.S. Dollar to 1960 levels, a task that would be greatly aided by figuring out how to get all those countries overseas to stop exporting the low cost goods with low cost labor to the U.S. since the 1970s. But frankly, I'd be happy if Sen. Warren could use her Harvard trained mind to increase domestic oil production so that the price of U.S. gasoline would return to the $1.84 a gallon it was on the day Obama took office in 2009.
Wait. I have a much more doable project for Sen. Warren. It is for her to take a DNA test to answer the question of whether she is, in fact, part Cherokee. And I'd consider paying two three lab assistants $22 an hour to work on that project - but I'm sure Ms. Warren would demand they get paid a figure that would insure the DNA test would never occur.
Comment
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Comment by Frank Chance Chenoweth on May 7, 2013 at 9:34am -
Be careful, Jack . . . someone will accuse you of being mean spirited and heartless . . . ! I am being sarcastic, of course. You're 100% right. Boston got what they voted for. So did people in Philadelphia with Kermit Gosnell's house of horrors. Philadelphians voted for the politicians who let this murdering abortionist get away with his crimes since before Roe v. Wade. --Frank Nitty
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Comment by Jack Kemp on May 7, 2013 at 5:38am
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The same mentality that voted in Elizabeth Warren gave that Chechen family $100,000 in welfare, a college scholarship, access to enough money to travel back to Russia while being "political refugees who fled for their lives" and money to make bombs. 86 percent of Boston voted for Obama in 2012 and his level of national security and the removal of terms like "islamist" from FBI training and procedure manuals. They got the level of security that they voted for in Boston.
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Comment by Victoria Thiel on May 6, 2013 at 11:45pm
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Elizabeth Warren is a first rate Mental Midget or is she a legend in her own mind. Either one or both suits her perfectly. So we are stuck with another moron in the Senate. What does that say about the people that voted her in. It certainly says a lot about our educational system. All those wonderfully educated collegians in Massachusetts.
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Comment by Brian T Hazel on March 31, 2013 at 8:25am
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Jack - Thanks for this Warren Piece. Recall that Liawatha herself is credited with imposing a new and unnecessary office of Consumer Protection. Ironically, with destructive and costly ideas like this she could become the target of its first case.
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Comment by Monica Babcock on March 20, 2013 at 3:35pm
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It is truly amazing how many dimwits are in the Senate. I actually did make $22.00 an hour, but it took 7 years to reach that salary as a systems analyst in IT.
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Comment by Frank Chance Chenoweth on March 20, 2013 at 1:37pm
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The amazing thing is that those people down there keep voting her back in, Paula. She's been there Congresswoman since 1997 or '99, I think. Incredible. What does it say for our political system, gerrymandered districts, and affirmative action that we keep numbnuts like this in office . . . ! --FRANK NITTY
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Comment by Jim Fogarty on March 20, 2013 at 1:33pm -
"Picture Book Stupid"... that's a new one... I Love it.
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Comment by Debrajoe Smith-Beatty on March 20, 2013 at 1:31pm
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The fight against indefinite military detention continues. Yesterday, the Las Vegas City Council and the Clark County Commission drafted anti-NDAA legislation to protect the Constitutional rights of their constituents.
City Councilman Bob Beers and County Commissioner Chris Giunchliani put forth the draft.
Afterward, Daphne Lee, the Clark County Chapter Head of PANDA, and Christopher Corbett, Nevada Executive Director of PANDA, expressed their gratitude to Beers and Giunchliani. Corbett said:
“This initiative will help raise awareness of the NDAA and encourage other municipalities and our state legislators to do the same.”
Specifically, sub-sections 1021 and 1022 of the NDAA allow the indefinite arrest, imprisonment, and/or transport to foreign prisons of anyone on U.S. soil whom the federal government declares is a terrorist suspect. In short, the 2012 NDAA enables the government to make any person on U.S. soil a prisoner of war.
Currently making its way to committee in the Nevada State Legislature is a related bill, Don Gustavson’s BDR 728, the Nevada Liberty Preservation Act.
You can help stop this violation of our Constitutional rights. You can help stop the NDAA. Encourage your representative to support this legislation, or thank them for doing so:
If you live in Las Vegas, go to http://www.lasvegasnevada.gov/Government/council.htm
If you live in Clark County, go to http://www.clarkcountynv.gov/depts/countycommissioners/pages/defaul...
Join us in the battle to stop the NDAA nationwide: http://pandaunite.org/join-us/
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Comment by Leon Donahue on March 20, 2013 at 1:25pm
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When hamburgers at the Golden Arches, Wendy's and all the others go up to 10.00 dollars a pop for a burger on a bun, this stupid DIMWIT Warren can pay for mine. She obviously has more money than brains.
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Comment by Paula Kennedy on March 20, 2013 at 11:51am
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Frank Nitty: Sheila Jackson Lee is a horrible joke gone wrong! As is the rest of the Progressive Liberals.
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