WHYY Duped by Fake Research Director at Fake Think Tank Citing Fake Poll

October 25, 2016 Goldy

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$15, Economics, Media, Michael Saltsman, Minimum Wage, WHYY

I grew up in Philadelphia, so I’ve got a ton of respect for WHYY, the local NPR and PBS affiliate (perhaps best known nationally as home to Terry Gross’ award-winning Fresh Air). Which is why I was so sorely disappointed to see WHYY’s “Newsworks” website give op-ed space to fake-think-tank anti-minimum wage shill Michael Saltsman: “ Op-ed: Raising minimium wage won’t flip the Senate .” I mean, for chrissakes, why not just print a goddamn press release? Saltsman claims to be the research director at the mendaciously-named Employment Policies Institute, which likes to describe itself as a “ non-profit think tank ” while in fact being neither. Indeed, Saltsman’s faux-think-tank is actually just one of several profitable front groups run out of the DC-offices of lobbying and PR firm Berman and Company . And if the editors at WHYY think I’m exaggerating, they might want to listen to this 2014 interview with Terry Gross , in which the New York Times‘ Eric Lipton explains how this scam works: LIPTON: Yeah, I was – you know, set up an interview with the research director. I got the address of his office. I went to the eighth floor of the building on Vermont Avenue, like four blocks from the White House. The elevator opens, and it’s Berman and Company. And I go in and, you know, there’s a bunch of awards on the wall, advertising awards, public relations awards that Berman and Company has won for its work, you know, doing ad campaigns on behalf of various industry groups. And so I didn’t see any evidence at all that there was an Employment Policies Institute office. And in fact when I started to interview the people there, they explained that there are no employees at the Employment Policies Institute and that all the staff there works for Berman and Company, and then they sometimes are just detailed to the various think-tanks and various consumer groups that he operates out of his office. And he bills them, sort of like a
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Damn You, $15 an Hour Minimum Wage!

July 25, 2016 Goldy

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$15, Economics, Minimum Wage, Seattle

Anybody who actually lives, works, or eats in Seattle knows firsthand that our local restaurant industry is booming. But for those of you on a raw data diet, the Federal Reserve of St. Louis serves up the above bland-if-nourishing graph that confirms the intuition of our eyes and tastebuds: Seattle’s restaurant industry is booming. In fact, despite the doom and gloom predictions of minimum wage opponents, food service industry employment in the greater Seattle metropolitan area has actually accelerated since adopting our phased in $15 ordinance. Damn you, $15 an hour minimum wage! Of course, the graph above represents all of King, Snohomish, and Pierce counties, so what about Seattle proper? That’s not as easily discernible from the Fed data, but as Paul pointed out last week , a new report from the University of Washington finds wages, jobs, and hours up for Seattle’s low-wage workers over the first year of phase-in, without any observable negative impact on businesses: The data are coming in, and they prove that contrary to the empty threats we’ve been hearing from conservatives, the sky has not fallen. Our job market is strong. Our workers are working more hours and making more money, which they are then spending locally, which allows employers to hire more people to meet with increased demand. Seattle’s march to the $15 minimum wage is right on track. Yeah, I know, it’ll take years to tease out the full impact of the $15 ordinance, and even the analysis will be somewhat speculative and subjective. But so far, predictions of job losses remain theoretical while workers’ wage gains are very, very real.

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The Real Cost of ST3 Would Come from Not Passing It

July 13, 2016 Goldy

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light rail, Policy, Sound Transit, ST3, transportation

Kudos to Seattle Times transportation reporter Mike Lindblom for breaking down the taxpayer cost of the proposed Sound Transit 3 measure, especially his explanation of how property taxes really work : Chances are, you’re now wondering if transit property taxes would skyrocket after 2017, presuming home values continue their rapid rise. They wouldn’t. Tim Eyman’s Initiative 747 capped the increases in property-tax collections for most local taxing districts at 1 percent, excluding new development. So the average ST3 property-tax bill would increase 1 percent in 2018 and beyond. As a rate, the initial $25 would gradually decrease, if values rise. Sure hope his paper’s editorial board digests this explanation before once again misinforming readers with bullshit claims that the property tax “would rise with the real-estate market.” But as much as I appreciate Lindblom’s evenhanded explanation of the cost of passing ST3, I wish he had spent a couple hundred words explaining the high cost of doing nothing. And the cost is huge—assuming commuters value their own time. According to Sound Transit our region’s population is expected to grow 30 percent by 2040—that’s about a million more people crowding our roads, ferries, buses, and rails. And they’re going to have to get to and from home, work, school, shopping, and leisure somehow. Build ST3 and many of these additional trips will occur on bus and rail. Don’t build ST3 and most of these new trips will be forced onto our already congested roads. While building ST3 isn’t likely to make our traffic better, it is almost certainly going to make it less worse. How much less worse? I can only speculate. But even a modest reduction in the increase of cars on the roads would generate huge payoffs for those of us who continue to drive. The math is actually quite simple. Imagine just a 10 minute
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Carl’s Jr. CEO Concern-Trolls Workers Whose Jobs He Wants to Automate

May 18, 2016 Goldy

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Andy Puzder, Berman and Company, Economics, Forbes, Overtime

Writing in an op-ed on Forbes.com, Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s CEO Andy Puzder warns about “ The Harsh Reality of Regulating Overtime Pay .” Turning highly sought-after entry level management careers into hourly jobs where employees punch a clock and are compensated for time spent rather than time well spent is hardly an improvement on the path from the working class to the middle class. “Highly sought-after entry level management careers,” my ass. During my coverage of the fast food strikes in 2013, I heard from a number of fast food workers who turned down “assistant manager” promotions because the extra 50 cents an hour wasn’t worth the extra 20 hours a week of unpaid overtime work. But either way, Puzder’s alleged concern for employee welfare is nothing short of ironic coming from a guy who fondly muses about the idea of replacing all of his workers with robots : “They’re always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there’s never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex, or race discrimination case,” says Puzder of swapping employees for machines. What a charmer. The harsh reality is that CEOs like Puzder couldn’t give a shit about the welfare of their employees (let alone the welfare of their franchisees’ employees). “Millennials like not seeing people,” Puzder explained to Business Insider in describing his robotized utopia. So if he could have automated all his workers out of their jobs, he’d already have done so. But he can’t. So he hasn’t. Likewise, you can be sure that if Puzder could run his restaurants with fewer employees working fewer hours he already would be. So don’t expect to see any overtime-rule-induced mass layoffs at Carl’s Jr. or Hardee’s anytime soon. Of course, it’s not just Puzder wiping away crocodile tears on behalf of the 12.5 million Americans who will soon be forced to endure higher pay for fewer hours at the cold unfeeling hands
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$15 Then! (Yet Another Reason Why a $15 Minimum Wage Isn’t as “Insane” as You Think)

April 15, 2016 Goldy

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$15, 2016, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, inflation, Minimum Wage

Last night during the Democratic debate, when asked if she would sign a $15 an hour federal minimum wage should the bill come across her desk, Hillary Clinton snapped back, “Of course I would … if we have a Democratic Congress, we will go to $15 .” Clinton has previously backed state and city efforts to raise the minimum wage to $15, but this is the first time she’s on the record supporting that number at the federal level. My, how far the $15 movement has come. And yet, not quite so far as it first appears. Back in 2012, when New York City fast food workers first walked off the job demanding a $15 minimum wage and the right to organize, the political and media establishment collectively rolled its eyes at such an “insane” demand. But that was back when $15 was still worth, well, $15 — at least in 2012 money. Four years later, adjusted even for our current anemic rate of inflation, those same three five-spots are only worth about $14.46. And not even Bernie Sanders is talking about jumping to $15 now. He proposes a gradual phase-in through 2022 (a full decade after that first fast food strike!), when $15 will only be worth about $12.80 in 2012 dollars. That’s not nothing. But in today’s money, it’s about $4,600 a year less than what those fast food workers were striking for. Because inflation! So yeah, the rapid progression of $15 from fringe idea to the most loudly shouted about point of agreement in the Democratic debate is nothing short of amazing. Still, whatever your first impression of the proposal, it’s important to remember that $15 now isn’t the same thing as $15 then.

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Free Marketeers Are Losing the Debate (and Their Minds) Over the Minimum Wage

April 13, 2016 Goldy

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$15, Economics, Minimum Wage, Shikha Dalmia, The Week, unemployment

Writing in The Week, Shikha Dalmia, a senior analyst at the libertarian Reason Foundation (motto: “free minds and free markets”), adds absolutely nothing to the minimum wage debate beyond the same old 1980s-era trickle-down bullshit : Progressives have gone crazy over the minimum wage. As opposed to conservative Republicans, who I guess are sanely campaigning on promises to deport 10 million immigrants, build a giant border wall, carpet bomb Syria/Iran/whoever, return us to the gold standard, and punish women who have abortions. President Obama got the ball rolling when he called for hiking the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 per hour. Now, both Democratic presidential candidates are trying to one-up him, with Bernie Sanders demanding a $15 federal wage and Hillary Clinton $12. Meanwhile, California and New York have already passed laws mandating the Bernie rate, and scores of cities across the country are clamoring to follow suit. Actually, President Obama first got the ball rolling back in 2008 , when he campaigned on raising the minimum wage to $9.50 an hour — equivalent to about $10.50 today (about 40 cents below the 1968 inflation-adjusted peak of $10.90). So, yeah, Obama’s been pretty damn consistent on this issue, like, forever. As for Hillary Clinton’s proposed $12 an hour minimum wage, phased in over five years , by the time it would be fully implemented in 2022, it would stand about 30 cents below the 1968 inflation-adjusted peak. So again, no historical outlier here. And while Bernie Sanders’ $15 minimum wage would represent an inflation-adjusted high, he too proposes phasing it in over five years, so it’s not quite the jump it first appears: about a 22 percent premium over 1968 (but about half what it would have been had the minimum wage kept pace with productivity gains as it had done over its first 30 years). So I’m failing to see what’s
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Employment Policies Institute Is a PR Firm Masquerading as a Think Tank. And They SUCK at It.

April 11, 2016 Goldy

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$15, Economics, Employment Policies Institute, Minimum Wage

As research director at the mendaciously named Employment Policies Institute , Michael Saltsman has one job, and one job only: Defend his restaurant and retail industry patrons from proposals to raise the minimum wage. And yet it is on Saltsman’s watch that the $15 minimum wage has quickly transformed from a “ near insane idea ” to codified law in Seattle, California, and New York. To borrow a phrase from the Republican frontrunner: Sad! No wonder Saltsman has taken to the pages of the Orange County Register to blindly lash out at the upstart minimum wage advocates who are, let’s be honest, totally kicking his supply-side ass: Advocates for the policy at a far-left Seattle think tank made the contrarian case that California’s rising minimum wage is entirely consistent with our past experience. Hey, that’s us! And yet in criticizing our post , Saltsman not only fails to extend the common courtesy of throwing us a link, he refuses to even mention our name. What a dick. Here at 100% plutocrat-funded Civic Ventures , we chuckle at the notion that our shop is “far-left” (Nick Hanauer’s mission is to save capitalism, not overthrow it), though since such ideological nomenclature is inherently subjective, whatever. But to be clear: We are not, nor have we ever claimed to be a “think tank.” (I only chose the title “senior fellow” because I think it’s funny.) Compare that to Saltsman’s Employment Policies Institute, which disingenuously claims to be a “non-profit think tank,” while actually being neither. In fact, it is actually just one of several profitable front groups run out of the offices of DC-based lobbying and PR firm Berman and Company . In a 2014 interview with NPR’s Terry Gross, the New York Times‘ Eric Lipton explains how it works: LIPTON: Yeah, I was – you know, set up an interview with the research director. I got the address of his office. I went to the eighth floor of the
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Shut Up! Shut Up! Shut Up, Already! The Minimum Wage Does NOT Kill Jobs!

April 7, 2016 Goldy

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$15, Economics, Minimum Wage, Trade, unemployment

While the headline is worse than what follows, Peter Coy’s latest piece in Bloomberg Businessweek — “ The $15 Minimum Wage Will Kill Jobs. Should You Care? ” — is an object lesson in the power of sheer repetition to overwhelm the actual facts. Oy: Start with an unpopular but irrefutable fact: Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, as some states are doing, will create both winners and losers. The winners will be workers who get paid more, of course. The losers will be low-skilled workers who don’t get paid at all, because employers couldn’t afford to keep them on. In the short term, no doubt, yes. Some businesses will struggle to adapt, and fail. Some workers will lose their current jobs. But then, that’s true of every economic innovation, from new technologies to new regulatory policies. The more pertinent question is not whether $15 will cause some workers to lose their jobs, but whether it will cause net job loss in the aggregate over time.* And on this, there is simply no historical evidence to suggest that it will. Coy repeats former Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Katherine Abraham’s claim that we “have no experience with an increase in the national minimum of that size,” but a quick glance at past hikes shows that this simply isn’t true. We have plenty of experience with 50 percent, 60 percent, even 94 percent minimum wage increases phased in over several years, with no evidence of any discernible correlation between rising wages and rising unemployment. Might $15 result in a substantial net loss of jobs? I suppose. As they say in the footnote to all those investment brochures, “past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.” But while Coy’s job losses remain theoretical, I can absolutely guarantee you that the wage gains are real. So yeah, despite how frequently and faithfully it is repeated, the assertion that “the $15 minimum wage will kill
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People Are Not Bananas (Except for Tim Worstall)

April 6, 2016 Goldy

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$15, Economics, Forbes, Minimum Wage, unemployment, Worstall

As a proud “Fellow at the Adam Smith Institute in London,” you’d think the one thing Forbes blogger Tim Worstall might have a firm grasp of is, well, Adam Smith. But you wouldn’t know it from Tim’s nuance-free depiction of the labor market : This is very basic economic stuff: If we have a surplus of something then that means that the price is above the market clearing price. This is true of bananas and it’s also true of labor. The answer to getting all the bananas sold is to lower the price. The answer to getting all the people who want to offer labor employed is to lower the price of that labor. Oy. If by “very basic” Tim means “simplistic to the point of absurdity,” then sure. The most obvious problem with Tim’s labor/bananas analogy is that people are not bananas. For example, if the demand for bananas far outstrips supply, people can always choose to eat apples or oranges or any number of other fruits. Because markets! But regardless of the state of the labor market, people still need to eat. And as Smith explains in The Wealth of Nations, this fundamental human condition — eat or die — is just one of the factors that inherently distorts the labor market decisively to the advantage of employers : What are the common wages of labour, depends everywhere upon the contract usually made between those two parties, whose interests are by no means the same. The workmen desire to get as much, the masters to give as little as possible. The former are disposed to combine in order to raise, the latter in order to lower the wages of labour. It is not, however, difficult to foresee which of the two parties must, upon all ordinary occasions, have the advantage in the dispute, and force the other into a compliance with their terms. … In all such disputes the masters can
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The Real Lesson from $15? America’s Trickle-Down Experiment Has Failed

April 1, 2016 Goldy

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$15, Economics, Income inequality, Minimum Wage, Washington Post

Washington Post editorial writer Charles Lane admits he has no earthly idea what a $15 minimum wage will do to California’s economy. Still, that doesn’t stop him from squeezing an 800-word column out of his utter absence of knowledge. Nice work if you can get it. There’s a total lack of evidence that the potential benefits would outweigh potential costs — and ample reason to worry they would not. Yes, true in the sense that it is literally impossible to gather evidence on the actual consequences of something that has yet to happen. But it’s not like cities, states, and the federal government haven’t raised the minimum wage hundreds of times over the past 80 years while producing little compelling evidence that the actual benefits (you know, higher wages) have ever been outweighed by the actual costs. And no, contrary to Lane’s assertion, California’s proposed increase from $10 an hour in 2016 to $15 in 2022 — 50 percent over six years — is not particularly “Yuuuge.” From a historical perspective, it’s kinda the norm . In fact, if anything, it’s on the low side. From 1939 to 1945 the federal minimum wage climbed 60 percent. From 1961 to 1968 the federal minimum wage climbed 60 percent. From 1974 to 1980 the federal minimum wage climbed 94 percent. From 1990 to 1997 the federal minimum wage climbed 54 percent. Hell, from 2007 to 2009, over just three years, the federal minimum wage climbed 41 percent. And what of the devastating job-killing consequences of these unprecedented wage hikes? If the evidence shows some equally obvious pattern of correlated job losses, I’ve never seen it. In fact, in the years following the largest one-year minimum wage hike in our nation’s history — a whopping 87.5 percent increase from $0.40 in 1949 to $0.75 in 1950 — the unemployment rate plummeted from 5.9 percent in 1949 to 2.9% by 1953.
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Civic Ventures

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