Chronicling the deterioration of the progressive mind and the NYT

Progs used to have some economics chops and conscience, now all they have is the will to power.  Read the two editorials on minimum wage, both from the NYT one from '87 and one from today.  Of course relatively few people read the NYT today and even fewer believe the Gray Granny anymore.  But clearly the bland bitch has had a few small, brain damaging strokes in the last 36 years.  Or they have "Upperwestsideheimers" Disease - a condition that causes them to forget reality and replace it with fashionable leftist fantasy and confabulation.  Koch brothers!!

1. From 1987, “The Right Minimum Wage: $0.00“:

Raising the minimum wage by a substantial amount would price working poor people out of the job market. A far better way to help them would be to subsidize their wages or – better yet – help them acquire the skills needed to earn more on their own.

An increase in the minimum wage to, say, $4.35 would restore the purchasing power of bottom-tier wages. It would also permit a minimum-wage breadwinner to earn almost enough to keep a family of three above the official poverty line. There are catches, however. It would increase employers’ incentives to evade the law, expanding the underground economy. More important, it would increase unemployment: Raise the legal minimum price of labor above the productivity of the least skilled workers and fewer will be hired.

The idea of using a minimum wage to overcome poverty is old, honorable – and fundamentally flawed. It’s time to put this hoary debate behind us, and find a better way to improve the lives of people who work very hard for very little.

2. From 2013, “Redefining the Minimum Wage“:

Over the last half-century, American workers have achieved productivity gains that can easily support a $15-an-hour minimum wage. In fact, if the minimum wage had kept pace over time with the average growth in productivity, it would be about $17 an hour. The problem is that the benefits of that growth have flowed increasingly to profits, shareholders and executives, not workers. The result has been bigger returns to capital, higher executive pay — and widening income inequality.

Efforts by the states and the federal government to raise the minimum wage are an important way to counter that dynamic. But they must be seen as modest and partial steps in the direction of fair wages. Other steps include more progressive income taxes, enhanced rights to form unions without retaliation, and government job-creation programs, because a tighter labor market would force employers to compete for workers.

Fast-food workers, Walmart employees and staff of federal contractors have all been agitating recently for higher pay from profitable employers. They deserve raises, and they deserve to have the federal government behind them.