Thank You for Nothing Massachusetts
Last week Senator Kennedy and the Democrats made a shameless attempt at raising the banner of Liberal special interests once again. After watching the Republicans play partisan politics from the duggout for the past few months, Kennedy, along with his chum from Massachusetts Senator Kerry, must have decided it was time they jump in and play along. John Kerry decided his best approach was to play to the “let’s get out of Iraq, now!!” portion of the voting constituency. He proposed an amendment calling for withdrawal of all US troops by the end of this year. Senator Kennedy went for the “Supply and Demand, Wha?, I never took Ecernomicks” voting block. He made a statement showing support once again for the Economic Policy Institute’s research on minimum wage laws actually increasing employment.
A couple of renegade Economists, David Card and Alan Krueger did a survey study (via the telephone) in 1992 with local fast food joints in New Jersey and Pennsylvania after the state of New Jersey raised its minimum wage. The 24-question survey included one question about employment. The results defied all logical reasoning and found that employment in New Jersey increased more than in Pennsylvania after New Jersey raised its minimum wage. Sounds like a telemarketing scam. Their study was rejected by the vast majority of the economists. David Neumark and William Wascher did a follow-up study using payroll information via tax-collecting agencies from the same demographic regions and found the opposite results. I’m not sure how any rational thinker could accept the 24-question phone survey over the payroll study.
Truth isn’t always conveyed over the phone as well as payroll data and via tax-collecting agencies. Just call my nephew’s house. I called my nephew a few days ago and he told me he was Spiderman. Numerous times in the past he claimed he was any number of famous Superheroes; Batman, Superman, even Aquaman. This seemed a little unbelieveable, much like unto the Card/Krueger experiment which proved minimum wage laws raised employment. One year after doing their phone survey research Krueger still says: “I want to emphasize that my comments should not be interpreted as support for the position that increasing the minimum wage is sound public policy”. I can only think that Kennedy is trying one of two things. #1 He is playing to ignorant voters who are too stupid to understand basic economics, or #2 He may really be that stupid. Minimum Wage laws increase employment? Yeah, and I’m Spiderman.
EPI’s spin on Minimum Wage
http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/issueguides_minwage
Here is a good review of Card/Krueger’s work.
http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj15n1-8.html
For those Economic friendly people you can also try drawing a supply and demand graph. It pretty much sums up the whole reason why Senator Kennedy is a total moron.
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