Fantasy in the reality-based community over the $22 per hour minimum wage

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.

Tags: Elizabeth Warren

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