If the point of a headline is to grab readers and drag them into a story, mission accomplished, Washington Times. $22 an hour -- wow! What will Elizabeth Warren think of next?
But if the point of a headline is to accurately describe the facts, it's do-over time. Here's what the report actually says:
“If we started in 1960, and we said [that] as productivity goes up … then the minimum wage was going to go up the same … if that were the case, the minimum wage today would be about $22 an hour,” the senator said, at a recent Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing on “Keeping up with a Changing Economy: Indexing the Minimum Wage.”
Important word, "if." Makes all the difference.
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Anything to spin a comment to meet the needs of their radical followers.
The Washington times is the information arm of the church of Rev. Sun Myung Moon, a man who believed he was the second coming of Jesus Christ*.
.
I get it. Shock Jock blogging. But really, what's next- debunking two headed baby reports in the National Enquirer?
------Notes-------
*There are news organizations from perspectives I disagree with, that are important sources of information. The Washington times is particularly warped though. The people that Moon collected around him for his media strategy conformed to his cold war bifurcation of the world. To them, they are heroic anti-communist Christian soldiers, and Warren is a communist secularist- nothing less than an agent of the devil. From their viewpoint, its ok to fight fire with fire- to fight the lies of the Devil with lies of their own. Any distortion is fair game in battling what they view as a cancer on the world. This is unlike the reporting from other conservative news outlets who believe in journalistic accuracy, but arrange facts using the lens of their conservative models that inform them how the world works.
Entirely predictable that wingnut media would jump on this misrepresentation. It feeds right into their "lazy (read 'nonwhite') hordes freeloading off hardworking (read 'white') Americans" narrative. Plus the basic point (that decades of productivity gains have all been skimmed off for the already very wealthy) is deadly to the GOP's core constituency, so of course they'll push back with everything they have.
I this shiny new quarter I am willing to wager on what will be Rush Limbaugh's opening rant today.
And on that note, look at the comment immediately following yours. The timing and the funny had me rolling for quite a while, I must say. It's almost as if he couldn't help himself.
Must. Parrot. Limbaugh!
LOL
A $22 minimum wage is a lefty dream. Don't tell me you all understand how many jobs that would cost? Or is there some other reason I'm not hearing "huzzah" for Sen. Warren?
Yes. This is why everyone on the left is calling for a modest 3 dollar raise in the minimum wage instead of a 15 dollar raise. Good job at having the most asinine talking point ever.
You would have to pay $10 for a burger at your favorite spot, but then again wouldn't troll pay go up too ?
Do YOU understand that she is NOT advocating a $22/hr min wage? She is only saying that if the minimum wage increased while productivity increased it should now be $22/hr. So, instead of sharing profits with the workers in the form of increased wages business are pocketing them.
Just another example of a Right-Winger cherry picking which words to focus on. This is how you get low-information voters.
JMK of CT
Allow me to introduce our resident troll .... He does it for a living . He doesn't have to make sense
shooter242
June 11, 2012 at 6:54 am
I’d like to encourage more trollery on left wing sites. Specifically pushback on common memes such as identified by Jonah Goldberg as unchallenged cliches. It can actually work, and it can actually change the course of debate.
For instance, I always challenge “the rich take too much of the pie” meme. There is no pie, no one decides who gets what, and the “pie” is a measure of contributions to a total. Ergo the rich don’t take they contribute. It’s been gratifyingly effective.
Try it you’ll like it. Don’t curse and keep the personal insults to a bare minimum, don’t allow moving goal posts or distractions. Ignore trollish responders, and be four times more civil. They hate that.
http://moelane.com/2012/06/09/troll-hunting-101/
Huzzah for Senator Warren!
I know, I know... you were elected to troll, not to read.
Apparently, Blanks doesn't think that workers should actually get paid for what they produce. What Warren alluded to was that if wages followed productivity, those people that did the work (productivity) would get $22 per hour. But, the Republican party thinks only the owners of the companies should get money from what the laborers produce.
Which is how we ended up here, with oodles of money at the top and the rest struggling to pay the rent. The Republican dream.....a few guys at the top with enough money to run everything, and everyone else can be their minions. That's why they want to gut education. Ignorant people make better slaves.
I see you don't understand the system. Owners put up the money, take a risk that they'll lose it all, while employees bargain for their wage upfront and lose nothing if the business fails. And most do fail.
So, if labor wants to pony up some savings to invest in the company with no guarantee of having their money returned, they can become owners too.
Name one, shooter. In federal office. There's 254 Democrats - not all of them liberals - to choose from.
Oh, wait, you can't.
Because you're a liar.
I propose we get a carload of people together, flash mob one of the busier unemployment offices, and taunt the people with Shooter's theory. That should go over real well.
Wow, I almost can't believe Limbaugh said that yesterday, but don't put anything past him, really.
Yeah, well here's the other part of the equation, Shootie. When owners think they're entitled to everything and their workers are entitled to the absolute minimum the owners can possibly get by with paying them, a) there are more people who don't make enough to buy the owner's goods and services, b) the workers will only work just hard enough not to get fired, actually lowering the owners holy profits and, c) if you take your idea of how an economy ought to work to its logical end, which you seem hellbent on doing, the workers might just decide its time to do a reboot on the whole society, starting with some anatomical alterations on the owners.
"I see you don't understand the system. Owners put up the money, take a risk that they'll lose it all, while employees bargain for their wage upfront and lose nothing if the business fails. And most do fail."
hooter (because you're only one boob)
Employees do lose something if business fails. They lose their jobs. OTOH employers without employees can't produce anything.
Crissa, what are you talking about?
Steve and Maria, there will always be labor, people need to eat. There won't always be jobs, and threatening people isn't going to help. You may not like it but here's how it works... labor is a bunch of people standing around with nothing to do - until someone with an idea and the money to pursue that idea - arrive needing help.
That's true for day labor to rocket scientists. Don't like it? Fine, you can always scrape together enough money to open your own business and reap the rewards or suffer the consequences. Your choice. Sitting around whining that someone isn't paying you enough is your problem. One generally gets paid what they are worth.
With the brilliant CEOs cutting jobs to make up for their 20 million bonus, plus the raise in salary and benefits they are getting TODAY, why shouldn't they cut some of the top jobs to make sure the people that do the actual work get a liveable wage?
Right wing radio is going all in against a minimum wage hike, it's freaky to hear the idiotic things they claim happen if you raise it.
"If" an important word? If only that were true..."if" there were WMD, "if" the votes in Florida were all counted, "if" ACORN still existed, "if" there were "death panels", "if" Democrats made sure they voted in each and every election,....
Yeah, I wish "if" had more power.
If she is asked about this she should not respond.
She knows what she said and she knows it makes sense so she should not even react to anybody that twists her words. There's no sense in playing into their games.
On the other side, 22 bucks an hour is still way less than what Julia Roberts made in that prostitute movie and way more than what congress deserves.
She should do the exact opposite. Ignoring them means only the false headlines get printed or only false information is broadcast. She needs to call them out on it and point out how either a) disingenuous it is to quote out of context and/or b) how these people lack reading comprehension skills (see shooter above). Even call out the Washington Times by name, set the record straight and show to casual observers that that isn't a credible news outlet.
And then she needs to double down the next time she makes a remark that could be misquoted by leading her statement with a preemptive "Just to be clear, I'm not saying that I think xyz... but that...abc"
Brewer . . . It wouldn't matter how thoroughly she qualifies her statements. Faux Nooz and the rest of the right wing spin machine will simply edit out those parts of her statement and present the rest as "fact."
Somewhere between 20 and 30 years ago, Republicans concluded that demagoguing discussions about our problems was much better--and more profitable--than working to solve them in ways that provide long-benefits to society.
Not dignifying it with a response may be more noble or taking the higher road, but on the other hand, to not deny the claim can be seen as a tacit approval of the comments.
The time for being polite and taking the higher road has passed; we all know what happens to nice guys.
Shall we respond by saying, that the Washington Times wants business owners who are still paying their employees the same that they were in the early nineties to support the GOP in those wages remaining the same while giving those business owners more tax breaks for their personal bank account consumption?
Why would raising the minimum wage to $22 an hour be a bad thing? The reality is that it wouldn't.
The fact of the matter is that productivity used to keep up with wages. Since the early 70's it hasn't. Today the median US household income is 44k. If wages kept up with productivity, today it would be around 110k. Where did all that extra money go? It went to the top 1%, and they got it by not doing any actual work.
That is why US household debt has increased by 1,101% since the 1980's, and the top 1% have seen their incomes more than double. This is more than just wealth redistribution. It's highway robbery.
This also is the root cause of the financial collapse. Economic depressions are always the result of overproduction. Too much supply and not enough demand to meet it. Raising the minimum wage to $22 would stabilize our economy, and it would keep us from having one economic bubble followed by another.
The reality is that the last time wages kept up with productivity, we had GDP growth rates that were 4 times higher then they are today. And we had an unemployment rate of just 3.4%.
http://thecurrentmoment.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/productivity-and-real-wages.jpg
JMK . . . No, he doesn't understand that. And he doesn't WANT to, because it would get in the way of a perfectly good (but nonsensical) rant.
The Times headline and the reaction of people like Rush and Shooter demonstrate why we can't have intelligent, fact-based give-and-take on issues that would lead us toward better solutions. Republicans are more interested in putting up barriers to problem solving because it supports their meme that government is incapable of doing anything worthwhile.
Those kinds of knee-jerk (or jerky) reactions take the place of thoughtful debate. The right wing complains that nobody on the left wants to listen to them and that they're too often "shut out" of these discussions. To the extent that's true, they don't have to look any farther than the Washington Times wildly inaccurate and provocative headline.
Rant? Hardly.
$22/HR.... the significance of this number is the productivity value that the population has lost from the wallstreet corp bankster pricing thieves. Effectively..
what does this mean? it means that you now work 3 times harder for the same @!$%#. This is what the thieving wallstreet banksters have done, they have replaced cash earned purchasability with bullsh*t consumer debt upon highjack prices. This is more than a fraud upon the population, IT IS THEFT.
And if you allow these thieves to get away with stealing the value of your work, at this rate, your grandchildren will be born as slaves. You have few choices.... you can charge and prosecute the thieves now, or you will be protesting in the streets, getting shot at by the thieving bankster armies, and having to shoot back like syria later.
Several Republicans want to cut it to zero...so split it at 11