What’s scarier than a shark attack? An increase in the minimum wage.
상어의 공격보다 더 검나는 것이 잇나??...잇다...최저임금 인상이 그것이다..
At least that’s what many corporate media outlets seem to want you to believe, given the apocalyptic tone of much of the coverage of California’s recent decision to raise the minimum wage for fast-food workers to $20 an hour, starting this April, a bump from the current level of $16.
While outlets like the New York Times (10/23/23), the Associated Press (9/28/23), CalMatters (12/21/23, 9/28/23) and the Sacramento Bee (9/29/23, 9/15/23, 9/11/23) have responsibly covered the policy change, highlighting the large positive effects that it will likely have on workers, others are obsessively accentuating the negatives.
켈리포니아에서 4월 부터 시행될 페스트 푸드 노동자들의 최저 임금인상에 대한 (16불에서 20불로 인상) 언론의 정반대의 보도가 잇습니다
어떤 언론은 긍정적인 측면을 강조하고 어떤 언론은 부정적인 측면을 강조 하엿습니다..
이들이 주장의 근거는 ...문재인 정권때 역대 최대의 인상을 두고 벌어진 논쟁과 거의 꼭 같습니다.
이들의 주의 주장이 믿을 만한 것이냐??는 꼭 같은 의문이 생기고
이들의 주의 주장을 살펴 보고 문재인 정권의 최저임금 인상에 대한 반론을 되 돌아 보시기 바랍니다.
노엄 촘스키는 --동의 제조하기 ..제조된 동의- 를 이야기 햇습니다.
현대 자본주의 체제에서의 어떤 주장이나 여론은..이 이미 특정 집단의 특정 목적을 위해 인공적으로 만들어지고 퍼진다는 것이지요...이런 제도된 동의의 특징은 항상 그 논리가 바뀐다는 것입니다..
어떤 목적을 위해 만들어진 논리가 다른 목적을 위해선 정 반대로 반박되어 사용되어야 하니...
일관성이 유지 될 수 없다는 것이고....유시민의 아갈통에서 쏟아저 나오는 말이 그런것 입니다..
지들의 신흥 갱상도 교주 노무현을 띠우기 위해 fta 타결을 띠웟는데
이명박을 씹기 위해 fta를 을사 늑약이라 입에 침도 바르지 않고 나발 거려 되고
교됴들은 그런 개 소리에 환장을 합니다.....이런것은 정신질환이라고 햇지요???
이런놈들과는 싸울 필요 조차 없습니다..
실컷 씨불리게 되 두면 ..스스로 자가당착에 빠져 지가한 말을 지가 씹지요..
가만히 그 지뤌 하는 꼴을 지켜 보기만 하면 됩니다.
Consider the following sampling of articles, by no means exhaustive, all of which link the minimum wage increase to higher prices or harm to workers:
Anecdotes Instead Of Evidence
Extensive academic research on the topic of wage floors has repeatedly found that minimum wage hikes tend to have little to no effect on employment.(최저임금의 인상이 고용에 미치는 효과는 거의 없다) The catch, of course, is that most of the hikes analyzed have been relatively modest, given the US’s stinginess towards workers. But a recent study looking at the effects of large jumps in the minimum wage on the fast-food industry in California and New York found the result was actually higher employment, not mass layoffs. Is any of that research cited in these pieces? No.
Instead, the articles elevate anecdotes about what individual companies have done and say they plan to do in response to the minimum wage boost. The second Business Insider piece (1/16/24), for instance, quotes the owner of four Fatburger franchises as saying, “I feel that there will be a lot of pain to workers as franchise owners are forced to take drastic measures.” Scary!
It’s worth emphasizing that these anecdotes about layoffs are entirely compatible with a story of the minimum wage hike having a negligible or even positive effect on employment. That’s because, when assessing the effect on overall employment, what matters is not whether there are individual companies that are laying off workers, but whether the net effect across all companies in the industry is positive or negative.
Consider that, as of late, a typical month has seen layoffs in the range of 160,000 in California. If you want to spin a story about how horrible the economy is, just run endless headlines on these layoffs—and ignore the fact that the state’s monthly hires have been averaging nearly 600,000.
Similarly, if you want to spin a story about how evil a rise in the minimum wage is, run endless headlines linking the minimum wage to layoffs, because layoffs will happen even if employment stays the same or increases overall. As Myth and Measurement: The New Economics of the Minimum Wage, a classic text in the minimum wage literature, put it:
(경제학을 공부한 놈들이 크게 깨우첫다는 듯이 씨불리는 주장이 이런 것이지요..
그리고 젊쟎게 나불 거립니다...........
..니들이 경제가 뭔지나 알어??...
..경제는 복합적이고 생물과 같은 것이야
그렇다고 ..그러니 경제를 제대로 보고 제대로 씨불리라고 ...응??
Despite this reality, the authors found that “on average…employment remains unchanged, or sometimes rises slightly, as a result of increases in the minimum wage.”
‘Fears Of Skyrocketing Prices’
A worrying number of media outlets are allergic to this level of nuance. And perhaps none so much as Yahoo Finance. Tying fearmongering over minimum wage hikes to inflation hysteria, Yahoo (1/4/24) ran this mess of a headline at the start of the month:
McDonald’s $18 Big Mac Meal Goes Viral Again as Fast-Food Minimum Wage Hike to $20 Triggers Fears of Skyrocketing Prices and Layoffs, Leaving People Questioning: ‘Maybe This Went Up Way Too Fast.’
The grain of truth here is that prices have risen substantially at fast-food restaurants lately, and especially at McDonald’s. Moreover, part of this increase can be attributed to strong wage growth. As Vox (1/9/24) has reported:
These numbers imply that a minimum wage hike would result in higher prices, which is in line with what academic research has found. The thing is, at least to this point, these price increases have been quite modest. The same recent analysis of large minimum wage hikes in California and New York that found a positive employment effect also found that a “roughly 50% increase in the minimum wage resulted in an approximately 3% increase in prices.” The new minimum wage increase in California would be closer to a 30% jump (relative to where the wage was when the legislation was passed in the fall). There’s no firm basis to suggest that such a rise would send prices “skyrocketing.”
‘Blaming Whoever Wrote That Law’
But Yahoo doesn’t need a firm basis for its narrative; all it needs is some good old right-wing propaganda. So it turns to reporting from the California Globe. As the Sacramento Bee (10/29/20) detailed in a 2020 expose of California news sites backed by conservative political operatives:
Unsurprisingly, under the headline “The Number of Victims Is Growing of New $20 Fast-Food Minimum Wage Law,” the Globe (1/2/24) was able to cobble together some horror stories about the effects of the new minimum wage legislation. The piece centers around the testimony of two workers who were victims of the recent layoffs at Pizza Hut. The core takeaway is basically the following quote, attributed to an anonymous Pizza Hut worker:
Again, as unfortunate as what happened to these two workers is, the fact that they were laid off tells us very little about what the overall impact of the new minimum wage law will be. But that won’t stop media outlets from cynically elevating such stories to demonize a policy that is set to raise the wages of hundreds of thousands of workers. Yahoo borrows parts of this quote, as well as others from the article, to fill out its piece, giving the Globe a further boost beyond its already substantial circulation.
Defying ‘Economics And Common Sense’
National conservative media have likewise been promoting the propaganda line that the minimum wage increase will inevitably lead to job loss (with the benefit of increased wages to hundreds of thousands of workers conveniently ignored). At the end of last year, the Wall Street Journal published an editorial (12/28/23) headlined “California’s Fast-Food Casualties,” which opened:
It continued by arguing that “it defies economics and common sense to think that businesses won’t adapt by laying off workers” in response to the new law. But does it? Or is skepticism of the idea that the law will lead to net job loss warranted, given the existing evidence base? The history of debates over the minimum wage is filled with claims about the detrimental effect of raising the wage floor that have repeatedly flopped in the face of empirical evidence.
But maybe this time will be different. The California law breaks with the standard approach towards wage floors in the US, where a floor is set across all industries in a particular region. Instead, the law sets a floor for a particular sector, and it establishes a wage council that will oversee wage increases from 2025 to 2029, something novel in American labor law. The layoffs that we’re seeing could have something to do with this unique setup.
Because the law sets a minimum standard solely for the fast-food industry, it leaves a loophole for fast-food companies to exploit. Rather than keeping delivery services in-house, they can dump those workers off on companies like DoorDash and Uber Eats, which are not subject to the same labor regulations. Because these companies can pay the workers less, the most sensible decision may now be for fast-food companies to scrap their delivery teams and outsource to outside delivery services.
경제의 한 부분만 최저 임금을 인상 시켯을때 기업들이 어떻게 꼼수를 부리는 가를 말 한 것입니다...경제 전체에서 최저 임금을 인상 한다면 이런 꼼 수는 부릴 수 없겟지요
This is a totally plausible story about what’s going on, though not the only plausible story. But even if it does fit with reality, it just looks like these delivery jobs are being transferred out of the fast-food sector, with the economy-wide net effect on employment unclear. So to cite these layoffs as evidence that the minimum wage hike will have a negative overall effect on employment is at best premature.
All of this focus on the possibilities of layoffs, moreover, totally distracts from the far-reaching benefits that the policy change is likely to have. California has over half a million fast-food workers, who, as of 2022, earned a median wage of a bit over $16.
Raising the minimum wage to $20 would directly affect the vast majority of those in the fast-food industry—even the 90th percentile worker made less than $20 in 2022. If there is in fact some rise in unemployment, which is not entirely out of the question, it would have to be pretty substantial in order to cancel out the positive effects of the wage boost.
Broadening The Discussion
It’s the media’s role to inform the public about reality, not to run sensational headlines about good intentions bringing disastrous consequences, as effective as that may be at attracting eyeballs. A solid start on the way to fulfilling this role would be for media outlets to consistently bring in experts to talk about the decades’ worth of research on the effects of minimum wage hikes. Some outlets already do this. Others, not so much.
Even better would be for the media to more frequently broaden the discussion beyond the minimum wage to other policy changes that would complement the minimum wage or fill in its gaps, policies like expanded unemployment insurance, the Earned Income Tax Credit, a job guarantee, and universal basic income. The narrow focus on sensational events does little other than distort the picture. Taking a wider view would bring things into focus.
At the moment, however, it might be best just to ask media outlets to stop trotting out propaganda lines that should have died a long time ago.
다른소린 문재인 정권의 10,000 최저임금 폐기 공약은 고의적으로 그리 한 것으라 생각합니다.
확 올려 놓고....십자 포화가 쏟아 지기를 기다렷다가....
-봣지??...우리가 안 하는 것이 아니고 못 하는 것이다.....고 배 까고 뒤집어 진 것이다고 봅니다..
그렇게 생각하는 이유??
노무현 5년을 격거 보니....야들이 얼마나 거짓과 사기질로만 똘똘 뭉처 잇는 집단이란 것을 알게 됫거덩..
탈 원전 공약 보세요??
공약을 햇쓰면 지키면 됩니다...
그런데 무슨 원전 위원회를 만든다...대 국만 토론을 한다...욤병질을 떨어 되길레
이 자들이 탈 원전은 커녕 증원전을 위한 준비를 하고 잇구나.......생각햇고...그리 되더라고
이런 생각을 쉽게 할 수 잇엇던 것도 노무현 5년간의 사기질을 격고 보고 몸으로 채득된 경험 때문이지요..
이걸 노무현교 쥐쇗끼때들은 탈 원전이라고 합디다...
개가 웃을 일입니다..
더 과관인 것은 ...
윤성열교 돼야지 쇗끼들은 ..문재인이 탈원전해서 전기값이 와장창 올랏다고 악악 거린다는 것이지요..
삶은 돼야지 돼가리가 벌떡 일어나 웃을 일입니다..
갈보나 창녀나.......무슨 차이가 잇겟습니까??..
어떻게 탈 원전 같은 거대한 정책이 정쟁의 대상이 되어야 하고 ...권력이 바뀌면 갈보년 바꾸듯이 함부로 바뀔 수 잇는 것인지
다른소린 이 선거로 권력이 결정되는 자유 민주주의 체체 가 ....증말....정말로 싫습니다..
다른소리가 자유 민주주의 체체에서 가장 못 견디는 것이 바로 이 선거입니다..
다른소린 직선제 개헌을 요구 하면 87년 내내 거리에 잇엇습니다..
헤요...
눙깔에 뭐가 씨웟썻나..........
뭔 지뤌을 그리 븅쉰쇗끼 처럼 잘도 떨엇던 것인지.....