Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) appeared on MSNBC yesterday and ruled out a minimum-wage increase because, as she sees it, the policy would rule out teenagers hoping to enter the workforce. Chuck Todd presented a compromise: a higher minimum wage for adults, and a lower apprentice wage for minors. The conservative lawmaker said she'd be "thoughtful" if such a bill were proposed, but added a curious anecdote.
For those who can't watch clips online, Blackburn said:
"What we're hearing from moms and from school teachers is that there needs to be a lower entry level, so that you can get 16-, 17-, 18-year-olds into the process. Chuck, I remember my first job, when I was working in a retail store, growing up down there in Laurel, Mississippi. I was making like $2.15 an hour. And I was being taught how to responsibly handle those customer interactions. And I appreciated that opportunity."
I'm sure she did, but there's a problem with her argument. As Travis Waldron explained, when Blackburn made "like $2.15 an hour" when she was younger, that's not the same thing as earning "like $2.15 an hour" now. In fact, in inflation-adjusted dollars, when Blackburn was learning how to be a responsible worker "growing up down there in Laurel, Mississippi," she was making "somewhere between $12.72 and $14.18 an hour in today's dollars."
Blackburn may not fully understand the policy details here, so let's make this simple. She thinks a $9 minimum wage would keep younger Americans out of the workforce, but when she had her first job, the minimum wage, in today's dollars, was $10.56. The GOP lawmaker made about a half-dollar more per hour than the legal minimum, though she gives the impression that $2.15 an hour, at the time, was a character-building exercise.
Blackburn, in other words, is inadvertently arguing for a significant increase to the minimum wage -- even larger than what Democrats have in mind -- while claiming she opposes an increase to the minimum wage.
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A Fox commentator brought up this canard yesterday citing the 83 cent wages he was paid. Other observers pointed out the common sense problem with the proposition.
So why did Chuck Todd fail to nail the representative with this obvious question? Personally, I think there aren't a lot of grey cells behind his urbane politico routine.
Ya think??
Don't single out Todd- can anyone name any of the "chattering class" that could hold down an actual job?
You can't expect Chuck Todd to ask an important question of a guest. Hell she might not appear on his show again.
Chuck Todd is a moron. One of the biggest droolers in the class of Incompetent Beltway Droolers.
I can well remember back about 45 years ago, when a job at the minimum wage of $1.25/hour in Los Angeles would allow a single person to have a nice (not great, but nice) 1-bedroom apartment in West Hollywood or Venice, afford a car, three meals a day, a night out once a week to the movies, and the time to work on the things that would take that person out of the minimum-wage economy. That's because the minimum wage was a living wage.
Today, in Los Angeles, full-time work at the minimum wage (in California $8.50/hour) would not even pay a month's rent of that same not-so-great 1 bedroom apartment (and not even half of it if one wished to live in West Hollywood or Venice today), let alone the other costs of life enumerated above.
Having a minimum wage job in Los Angeles today that would allow one to live as they did on $1.25/hour in 1967 would take at least at a minimum $20/hour, and would still preclude residence in any of the "nicer" neighborhoods.
I think anyone who has interviewed Congresswoman Blackburn in the past has probably learned not to expect her to make any sense.
You can actually hear Chuck Todd say/sigh "right" at one point, acknowledging her one-track argument and refusal to engage on the substance. Asking another followup at that point wouldn't have done any good, since Blackburn always just retreats to, "Obama is bad, but we Republicans are 'thoughtful'." It doesn't matter what the question is, she has her rehearsed talking points, and she's going to ignore the question and deliver those instead, no matter how irrelevant. You can actually hear Mr. Todd's eyes rolling at the end when he says, "OK. Alright, I'm gonna leave it there."
If people who get minimum wage lived in accordance with their income without any government assistance, they could afford, at best, a sturdy cardboard box on a heating grate.
When has Chuck the toady Todd ever asked a legitimate question of any teapub? He can't because as he always says, "both sides do it".
Mike, We are talking about people working for a fair wage here; not about a government hand-out so don't insinuate that this about Republicans=work and Democrats=government hand-out. I bet you don't live on minimum wage and probably couldn't if you tried.
I read what Mike said differently. He is saying that those on minimum wage can't live any sort of reasonable life without government assistance. I don't think he is saying that they prefer to live on government assistance, just that minimum wage is so low that one needs food stamps or similar assistance to live if that is what their only income is based on.
Anybody that didn't know Todd is an idiot was have disabused of that notion after listen to him after/during any of the Presidential debates. Then, just to make sure everybody got it, he went on Charlie Rose and reinforced the notion.
"You people make me sick with all your facts and figures n' stuff.
It upsets my willful ignorance . Thank god I'm talking to Chuck "softball" Todd"
This.
This is the problem with conservatives. They think they know what they're talking about when it comes to economics, but in reality they're dumber than dog droppings. Really? You can't get your head wrapped around a simple concept like inflation?!?
Here is a historical graph of the minimum wage. It charts the nominal vs the real value of the minimum wage.
http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/anth484/minwage.jpg
"In fact, in inflation-adjusted dollars, when Blackburn was learning how to be a responsible worker 'growing up down there in Laurel, Mississippi,' she was making "somewhere between $12.72 and $14.18 an hour in today's dollars."
And is usual, that fact either went completely unnoticed by Chuck Todd or he just was too craven to bring it up.
Chuck Todd and Luke Russert . Two people elevated beyond their level of competence by the untimely passing of Tim Russert.
Todd, Russert and a host of others in the news media do soft interviews just for the purpose of getting a guest to talk to them on TV. They are whores of the worst kind because they sell their integrity so cheaply. Stewart and Colbert have more intelligent conversations with their guests and they don't go easy, e.g. Stewart's interview of Obama just before the election.
@ sicn-n-effin - You can put David Gregory in that same line.
Let's not forget to include David Gregory on the softball team.
Right you are . How Could I forget that incompetent beltway hack. Could you imagine meet the press with a real journalist (Maddow ) and no John McCain
I can't imagine any Sunday talk show without Johnboy at least twice a month.
David Gregory only softballs Republicans these days; take a look back at his interviews of WH surrogates during the election; he practically ambushed Rahm Emmanuel.
What an absurd thing for her to say. How would raising the wages keep kids out of the work force? And wouldn't giving them more money help them better pay for the rediculously high college costs? She's a fool. How do these people ever qualify to run for any leadership positions? Maybe she should go back and try working at that retail shop and get a dose of reality.
Furthermore, if you have separate minimums for adults and teens, more adults will be passed over and young people will be laid off once they reach the cut-off age.
A few years ago in France, they tried to fix the problem of companies being too scared to hire under-25s because it's too hard to fire anyone, by making it easier to fire under-25s.
Companies welcomed the new law, and promptly fired large swaths of their under-25 workforce, because they could. They hired some back, at reduced wages.
The minimum wage IS for entry level and young, emerging workers. Talking about a wage that's lower than the minimum kind of defeats the purpose of having a minimum. If employers could get away with paying workers nothing, they would.
Chuck Todd should have known better about this too. The minimum wage DOES NOT bar anyone entry into the work force.
A job is 2 things happening at once. Work and wages. Each has a value. The value of one's work is their productivity. The labor of a burger flipper has a real value. So does their wage.
The value of their labor is called productivity. We can measure the ratio between their wages and productivity. And in the food service industry that ratio on average is 1:4.
That's right. In order for Blackburn's argument to have any merit at all, the minimum wage would have to be more than $29 an hour.
Touché! Chuck Todd is about as knowledgeable aout economic policy as, oh, Herman Cain on tax policy.
Another math challenged Republican. It's unimaginable that she wouldn't have her staff figure out what her wage was today adjusted for inflation - so inflation of the GOP bubble she lives in is the problem. she needs to take remedial math...
As I said earlier , willful ignorance.
She knows absolutely she can say practically anything on the MSM with zero chance of getting called out.
They know better than to go anywhere near real journalists like Maddow, Basir, and Solidad O'Bryan
it's not unimaginable. it doesn't matter. As you saw, when given the chance to nail her to a large number of Americans it was missed. Instead the few viewers of progressive blogs like this one will get the information and the mainstream will not. They'll hear, wow 2.15 an hour (even if they know inflation exists they'll assume she knew what she was talking about and 2.15 is still less than the current minimum wage at today's dollar value). The fact is republicans have learned they can say pretty much whatever they want and they WILL NOT be called on it.
It's hard to penetrate a closed mind when the head is buried in the sand. She is appealing to the Republican base. It is truly the Stupid Party. After all, she is a woman in the Republican Party. Can anybody out there tell me the name of just one, just one, intelligent woman in the GOP? They could never win an election if they were intelligent. That would be a threat to the insecure males that control the party. The same males that are intent on passing every law they can to restrict women's rights. I hope their opposition to this meager increase comes back to bite them in the butt.
A woman who is a Republican is a traitor to her gender...period...end of story.
Heck why pay them at all? They should be happy to get the experience cleaning out the french fry oil for free. Don't expect them to show up the next day.
Isn't that what we're already doing? Big corporations call it being an intern. Leave college with thousands in debt so you can go to work for a multi-billion dollar corporation for free.
Not meant as a cheap shot, but I'll bet that MSNBC has more than a few of those interns running around.
Flown any regional airlines lately? That is their business model for pilots...
Great Frontline show on it
sick-n-effin:
That Frontline episode was really good. And really frightening. I wish all those investment fund people who drive those decisions were forced to use those pilots on their own jets. I can tell you that my firm wouldn't let some of those regional pilots within 100 feet of our jet's cockpit. Then you might see trained, paid, and rested pilots for all us "little people".
Where trolls can vent their hate! Welcome Trolls!
http://radicalsinc.newsvine.com/
Typical, the corporatocracy pays to much in taxes (0 is to much) and to much in wages,,,
TOO much.
No I'm not the Grammar Nazi. But 3 times in one sentence...c'mon!
Like the rest of her party, Rep. Blackburn still thinks we ought to rewind the clock back to the supposedly glorious years of Eisenhower's America when June Cleaver wore pearls as she ran the vac and Donna Reed and her TV husband slept in separate beds. And her claim about "some mom's" calling her about lowering the minimum wage is the famous fallback for politicians who want to pass off their nonsense on some undefined public.
The only thing sadder than Ms. Blackburn is watching Chuck Todd embarrass himself again, and NBC News, by setting out ideas for economic policy. A two-tiered minimum wage is nonsense, unworkable, and would do nothing to increase youth employment. In fact, decades worth of independent research has shown that raising the minimum wage does nothing to decrease jobs, or their availability, for any age group. He's almost as shameful to the network as David Gregory on Sunday mornings.
Let's consider: If all the women working today just stopped working, therefore leaving all those job openings - and the minimum wage was abolished, would the men step up and work round the clock in order to make minimum wage? Or would they go on strike and demand twice to three times as much from one job so they could at least sleep? Errr...I mean play vid-games? Honestly, these politicians are from the "me" generation - which I was erronously born into - and now we are seeing what the 80's education has wrought. No wonder I enjoy hanging out with the boom crowd. Most have more intellectual savvy than the crowd I grew up with and now with the boomers dying off, we're going to be subjected to this "me" generation's ignorance, greed, and insecurities. Oi!
Jontara- "and now with the boomers dying off" Whattttt? I'm 52 and hoping you can be hanging with us a long long time.
Oh look, Mal-adjust Barbie! The only thing worse is the commercial I have watch before listening to these idiots..
Good comments on Todd, allow me to add a comment about Luke Russert. On the night of the State of the Union,he sought out and had a short interview with Ted Nugent. The vulgar Nugent said and I quote, "I literally pooped in my pants to get out of this interview". Nugent reportedly did that very thing to render himself inelgible for service in Vietnam. Had Russert been a better reporter, he would have been aware of that, confirmed the accuracy in advance and he could have hit that opening right out of the park. Sounded like Nugent was familiar with such a classless and nauseating act.
I always get the impression he is star struck. He cant believe he got this job .
Let us not forget Luke's age. What is he 25? How much "history" can he really be expected to know? How can he ask a question about something of which he has no knowledge?
And lets not forget how he got thrust into the lime light in the first place. His dad wouldn't have forgot to put the beat down on that draft dodger Nugent !!
"Nashville, you have a problem!"
To Hell with the twang, you're not welcome here. That place needs a meteor!
Not all of Nashville is bad... most, but not all. Just let me get far enough down the road to be out of the blast radius, but close enough that I can come back and roast marshmallows over Gov. Haslam's remains.
When I started driving the price of gasoline was $1.22 per gallon.
Why can't the oil corporations be satisfied to get that now?
When I used to smoke , a package of cigs was 25 cents ! Now they are up to $70.00 a carton !! I think gas was 35 cents a gallon. I too was making $2.00 an hour. Next time some rethug says we don't need a min. wage increase, then ask why gas and cigs have increased as much. That was ONLY 40 yrs ago. I suspect I am the same age or younger than the Tenn rethug , blackburn. Put these facts in your repertoire and be ready to trot them out ! ( like I said above, age/a little history/perspective, knowledge)
Grew up in Arlington Va. Gas was .55 cents and I could drive to Ocean City Md on 5.00 worth and still have a 1/4 tank of gas. This was in a '66 Falcon station wagon with a straight 6 cylinder. Cigs were .55 in a machine lol..
Marsha, Marsha, Marsha ...
I think Nate Silver nailed it when he pointed out that the chattering classes don't really want realistic, data-driven answers. Instead, they want to go with their "gut feeling." It's a classic case of "My answer is as good as anyone else's and better than most!"
The Ol' heart strings say "yes". The Ol' brain synapses say this bump in wage will lead to less hours, less jobs and higher consumer prices. I thought this was an entry level wage for teens not intended for people as a life long career.
Now I was wrong back in 82 just to see what it was like pumpkin.
Check Alva's post yesterday or Wednesday about how raising minimum wages tend to increase employment or, on occasion, decrease unemployment.
Out of 21 occasions when the minimum wage was raised, in fourteen instances within a year unemployment had decreased. Of the seven cases where the unemployment rate stayed the same or increased, for at least two the reason for the increase could be safely be attributed to reasons not related to the increase.
By the way, the idea that a minimum wage is merely for those starting out is completely wrong. The minimum wage was first instituted during the Great Depression and was designed to ensure a weekly wage that could provide the basic minimum for a family of four. The original minimum wage was $.10 an hour - at that time, $45 dollars a week before withholdings (if any). Even during the Depression, trying to provide, food, shelter and clothing for four people on $45 a week was hard.
Of course, the implementation a minimum wage was also part of a economic plan that included marginal tax rates of 80%, which encouraged companies, and individuals, to spend as much of their profits on wages, a business deduction, as possible. Perhaps that has something to do with how fondly so many people my age and older remember the Eisenhower years?
That and the fact we were carefree children...
Nice historical perspective on the origin and intent of minimum wage. Carefree children, though? "Duck and cover" drills instilled a generation with fear of "the Commies". Joe McCarthy witch hunts and calling women "unfeminine" for wanting to work as more than primary school teachers, nannies and secretaries were not our finest moments either.
There is no such thing as "the good old days". I look back at history to understand where problems come from, but I look forward to work on fixing them.
Ah, yes. I remember the good old days. I worked for half a wage and trained men to work beside me who started out at twice the wage I was making. There were no 40 hour weeks. My husband worked a 90 hour week for several months out of every year. That was 7 days a week during the busy season. The minimum he worked each week was 50 hours. We helped to create 4 "we built it" millionaires. When the company we worked for started a profit-sharing plan, we were so excited because we did not make enough to save for retirement. Naturally, the bosses took most of the money so the government stepped in and said they would have to pay their employees their fair share or dissolve the plan. You guessed it...they dissolved the plan. We survived many months by eating corn and peas that the farmers gave us out of their fields.
I am part of Romney's 47%. I live on a small Social Security check and Medicare. My husband died early because his body was worn out from overwork and pollution in the workplace. Together we toiled 100 years and now Republicans have branded me a "taker".
Women in my day (the 50's) worked for half what men made. When these women get old, their Social Security checks are paltry. Saving for retirement was not an option. It took every penny of your paycheck just to survive..to put food on the table.
I am sick of hearing people complain about welfare and food stamps. A young woman with a couple of kids working full time at minimum wage does not bring home enough money to feed her children. When I hear people complain because she gets $25 worth of food stamps I want to slap their stingy faces. Remember, one-third of the men in this country do not pay child support. What is she supposed to do? Every dollar we invest in our children we will get back ten fold. Every extra dollar this mother makes will go right back into the coffers of the greedy rich because she will have to spend it. Shame on us for allowing this to happen. It may be too late to fix it.
"a character-building exercise"---and what character she shows! Lying, sociopathy, fake hair coloring. Sigh.
You forgot an evident facelift too.
You know very well that math has no place in republican politics.
I said this yesterday...my first job was $1.65 an hour. But my tuition was $188 a term. Yes, I paid for most of my education. My kids can't do that TODAY even if they WERE making $9 an hour.
First, Marsha Blackburn doesn't answer the question, in typical Republican fashion. She says 'I'd look at that', in regard to a min. wage bill that would include something re: young people. OF COURSE, she would look at it, it would come across her desk, just like any blll and woul require that she 'look at it.' But, that phase means nothing. She also mentioned young people not having access to Health Care, but they would be able to be covered by their parents' insurance up until age 26. How old are these 'young people' to whom she refers? She makes no sense and, merely sounds like she is making up BS excuses for not supporting raising the minimum wage. Once she gets the memo regarding the had-line position the Republicans are going to take on this issue, she will come up with THAT reason she is against increasing the min. wage, in the meantime, she came up with this nonsense.
Oh, Marsha, even with all that makeup on, no one's buying it.
The last time I was at Mc D. there were no teenagers, just old retired women, with their fancy old people shoes and the Micky D visor, picking up trash in the parking lot and filling orders. It made me sick to my stomach. The R's must not get out much, and I live an area that is not poverty ridden. Old folks deserve to retire. The morning anchors, including Morning Joke, are incredibly ill informed. It is cringe worthy. I include Gregory in that as well.
What happened to my comment.