On May 2, 2014 at 09:03, BigPapa said...
Even though this article is in the Wall Street Journal, which traditionally is biased toward business,** I think they've missed some things:
*There is no explanation of what the chart means. As I see it, the percentages listed at the left are the percentages of available workers who work in the fast food industry. Give me a different explanation of the chart if you can find it explained somewhere.*The chart and article do not mention A THING about people who are not fast food employees. Fast food employees are not the entire economy. Results for this one kind of employee constitute only one data point in the whole mess that is the reality of the situation. It's important to be aware that a rise in one sector might mean a decline in another sector; if that declining sector is, on average, a higher-paid sector, then a rise in fast food employees is an economic loss. Or, as someone said during Obama's second presidential run, "Yes, Obama's provided jobs. I've got two of them." This is not an improvement.
*While fast food workers are cited as the canaries in this mine, perhaps they're not. The study by the OMB, cited in the article linked above, states
Those local findings stand in contrast to a recent study by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. In a February report, the CBO estimated raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour from $7.25 would reduce U.S. employment by 500,000 while pulling 900,000 people out of poverty.
The OMB often is at variance with politicians on either side of the aisle, and the OMB is usually more accurate than the politicians.
**I say this as a conservative who is open about the biases of different news sources.
