Fantasy, via an author in the final issue of The Boston Phoenix:
Elizabeth Warren was the only senator on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, aside from the chair and ranking minority, to show up at last Thursday’s hearing on indexing the minimum wage to inflation. This was unfortunate for the two witnesses representing the National Restaurant Association in opposition of the idea, because it meant that every 15 minutes it was Warren’s turn to ask questions again.
She carved them up like a Thanksgiving turkey. Has their association ever, in its history, supported an increase in the minimum wage, Warren asked — and if not, does that mean they believe it should still be one dollar an hour? Where, she inquired, had the extra $14.75 per hour gone, representing the difference since 1960 between increased worker productivity and the increase in the minimum wage? And which should we take as more meaningful, your speculation about what might happen at your store, or this study of what did happen at tens of thousands of companies in states that adopted minimum-wage indexing?
Reality? Don’t take my word for it.
Reality, via an author at HuffPo:
Don’t you just love it when a reckless neophyte driver tells the mechanic how to fix the engine of a broken car? That analogy describes a professor of bankruptcy law advising entrepreneurs and legislators how to survive the worse economic downturn in recent history. Elizabeth Warren, the newly elected Senator from Massachusetts, is a job killer when broadcasting $22 an hour as a “minimum wage.” Maybe she is just trying to get media attention, but, arguably, irresponsibly….
Professor Senator Warren’s course in “How to kill jobs 101” is cruel and unusual punishment especially to hard working small businesses, family owned farms and companies trying to survive since 9/11 in struggling communities across our nation.
Now this post title is not fair. The second author is not part of the “reality-based community.” She’s just in reality.
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Given her academic background, maybe she just has a bias in favor of bankruptcy.
“Elizabeth Warren was the only senator on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, aside from the chair and ranking minority, to show up at last Thursday’s hearing on indexing the minimum wage to inflation.”
Wonder why every other member who COULD be absent WAS absent?
Warren is particularly annoying to me. A friend, who hit me up for start up cash (which I refused to provide), had her “You didn’t build it” speech posted on the wall of his business. He, of all people, should know the nonsense of her ideas. He has built three successful businesses and has lost two others.
How any thinking person, especially anyone involved in running a business, can think that tripling the minimum wage will raise the standard of living in this country is beyond comprehension. These people shouldn’t be allowed to vote, be near small children, pump gas, or play with scissors. They are dangerously ignorant.
Oh my gosh, 2 comments on that HuffPo post and both of them are asking if the piece was a parody or joke. Telling the truth at HuffPo is particularly thankless when you are also violating the “thou shalt not criticize Elizabeth Warren” commandment.
There are no words to describe “The Boston Phoenix” ode to Warren. Every time I see polls showing Hillary Clinton tromping through the 2016 landscape like the StayPuft Marshmallow Man, I think they ditched her once before. If anyone could knock Hillary off the pedestal this time around it would be Warren. The love-fest for her makes Obama’s look paltry in comparison. I think I would prefer to take on Warren in 16 but I think I might have said the same about Obama in 08. I shudder to think what a Warren administration would do to this country. We’d be better off with Mr. StayPuft.
“If anyone could knock Hillary off the pedestal this time around it would be Warren.”
What about Joe Biden? I’d jump ship and vote for Joe Biden just to watch the spectacle of comedy that would be a one-term Biden administration. Despite the damage done, I’d do it, I swear. I love that guy, the way I loved the Three Stooges, Pee Wee Herman, and Foghorn Leghorn.
Heh, my dream 2016 Dem ticket Biden/Judd.
I don’t know why she wants to be so chintzy. If we raise the minimum wage to $1 million hour then everybody would be rich.
I tried to read the whole article but TLDR.
Warren certainly gets good PR. I would say the article is fellatious but is that really appropriate with a female senator?
Heh!
You BAD…
Still with the FAKE Native American stuff, old Lizzie is.
22 Bucks an Hour. Yeah yeah..
Lived next door to a REAL Native American, at one time. Harold J. Smith, aka http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Silverheels
“He lived for a time in Buffalo, New York.” as did his father and mother and the whole family.
Great folks and great neighbors
Nothing like free press or free television time to get your face out to the public in preparation to contesting Hillary for POTUS.
Just like Obama, everything ignorant that spews from her mouth is reported as brilliance and boldness by those who “make” the news.
Wake me when the firm constraints of reality in our world are overcome by something other than empty rhetoric. Failing to accomplish the fanciful, inform me when my beachfront property in Hawaii is ready for occupation, or perhaps a visit. Yes, I would settle, until I don’t (my demands are progressive), for a visit to paradise. I would lie on the sandy beach, bask in the warmth of the Sun, and listen to the empty rhetoric… Well, it was just a dream.
Meanwhile, let’s enjoy a progressive devaluation of capital and labor, because there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. There must be. So they have promised. So they must deliver. Right? Instant (or immediate) gratification without consequence for everyone!
I think the best solution is to simply change the min-wage today in, say, DC, NY, MASS, IL, CA to the $22, and then see if the economy soars there or tanks.
That way, we’ll have 3 years of data to look at, by the 2016 elections. I think the representatives from those states could hardly say “no” to such a bill, and the Republicans would have a lot of fun proposing it. And imagine how it looks if the Reps vote for it, and the Dems vote AGAINST. 🙂
Where is Liz for businessmen who are getting hammered? Where’s the minimum wage for them? Say, an overtime tax credit? If they can document 60 hours a week for the year, their tax gets based on the rate for 2/3 of their adjusted gross income. Or they get a tax credit based on number of employees, instead of an ObamaCare penalty. Or how about relief from minimum-wage laws when profits drop?
Why does Elizabeth Warren hate restuarant employees?
Why does Elizabeth Warren hate minimum-wage employees?
“The Greater Recession: America Suffers From a Crisis of Productivity”
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/09/the-greater-recession-america-suffers-from-a-crisis-of-productivity/242704
FYI
“Restaurants are an industry ripe for automation. Imagine being able to order your food before you get there and robots that set out your food before you arrive. Pizza chains such as Dominoes, Papa Johns, and Pizza Hut already accept online orders. I’ve ordered and paid online. I see from a quick Google search that some online ordering companies offer online ordering services to any restaurant. Information flow is especially easy to automate. You shouldn’t have to wait for the check. A touch panel on the wall should give you your costs and let you slide a card thru a card reader to pay your bill.
The physical work of a restaurant is harder to automate. But robots in the kitchen will eventually take over most food preparation work. The future employment prospects for lower skilled workers look grim….”
http://www.parapundit.com/archives/008726.html
Well, the obvious answer to the problem of automation of the physical work is to pay the robots $22/hr and their managers $30/hr!
Fairness, and all that…..
If that became law, the effects would sink the visible US economy.
We already can see an increase in the black and gray markets for goods.
A ridiculous minimum wage law that would be unworkable and therefore unenforceable would cause many to resort to black market labor.
We would truly then be a 3rd world nation.
Good job Liz, Good job.
The minimum wage is, always has been and always will be: ZERO
Lizzie makes me so proud to be from MA. Can’t wait until Ed Markey, who actually has a worse haircut than Liz, and may be even more of a pea-brain, joins her in the Senate.
I need to move.
Lizzie’s just tossing her hat into the 2016 ring with her $22/hr minimum wage musings, doc. The surest and quickest way to getting to the top of the list of Democratic Heartthrobs for 2016 is to out Obama the current Obama panderpalooza and a $22/hr minimum wage just might do that. At $22/hr who needs a nursing school education, a plumbing, electricians, or a tool and die making apprenticeship to live somewhat high on the hog. Who even needs to aspire to work their way up from life’s bottoms like the orginal VanderBilts, Carnegies, or Rockefellers did when the power of an almighty state can provide you exactly that with no hardship or effort? Just turn the United States into an Occupy Wall Street’s thugs and slugs Valhalla. Otherwise the Democrats just might bring the originator of the current panderpalooza back for a rerun. We don’t need no stinkin laws, nor a stinkin’ Constitution for “All ways are my ways sayeth the Queen” or a would be President For Life, dictator, and king.
Why don’t Warren and her ilk just cut to the chase and say what they really want: All private and corporate money confiscated into a single pile, then divided by the number of 47%-ers who are registered to vote, with 10% raked off the top for Warren and her ilk.