Thread by @ClaireBerlinski

1. The Disappearing Middle Class.

Quick scene-setter: a hat tip to her constituents, many of whom work two or three jobs just to stay afloat. "Men who push wheelchairs and haul bags at Logan airport all day, then drive cabs or work security in the evening."

Then a Senate scene-setter: it looks "like a stage set: high ceilings, heavy paneling, dark blue carpets. The lights were mounted on the walls, giant art deco torches that looked like they were illuminating an ancient temple."

Good for her for trying to describe what it looks and feels like to be in the Senate, but bad execution. Of course it has high ceilings and heavy paneling, and no one cares about the color of the carpets.

That's okay. Points for realizing that she should try to describe it.

Scene set, she makes the case for raising the minimum wage. Her argument:

1. For more than 40 years, workers' pay hasn't kept pace with inflation.

2. Productivity's gone up, profits are up, executives have gotten raises. But the people who do the hardest, dirtiest work have no security.

3. "The data are clear: Study after study shows there are no large adverse effects on jobs when the minimum wage goes up."

Hmm. Her footnotes seem pretty good, but I'm not seeing a single study, no less study after study, to support this claim.

And in fact it's not true. The empirical evidence is mixed. Some studies find either no or a small effect: nber.org/papers/w4509, eprints.lse.ac.uk/88682/; others find significant effects: journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.117…, onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.11…

Neumark's literature review says, "A sizable majority
of the studies surveyed in this monograph give a relatively consistent (although not always statistically significant) indication of negative employment effects of minimum wages." nber.org/papers/w12663.…

Here, Belman & Wolfson "consider more than 70 articles that focus on some aspect of the effect of the minimum wage on employment and find results that range between large, statistically significant
negative effects to small, statistically significant positive effects."

"In some instances, qualitative results vary within an article as researchers apply a variety of methods to different data, time periods, and definitions of the minimum wage." research.upjohn.org/cgi/viewconten…

Economists are highly divided about this. The data are anything but clear. It's true that "study after study" shows there are no large adverse effects on jobs when the minimum wage goes up, but it's also true that "study after study" shows there *are* large adverse effects.

It's been a really hot topic for research among economists for a while. Check out the range of responses: igmchicago.org/surveys/minimu…

Anyway. Warren reports that Senator Alexander said if he had his way, there would be no minimum wage at all.

Warren recounts this as if he'd said that he wants to feast on the lungs and livers of men who push wheelchairs and haul bags at Logan airport all day. She's so shocked that she dissociates and hallucinates and goes back to Oklahoma City, when she was 16 ....

Okay, before we take this trip down memory road--which in the film version could be shot maybe in black-and-white?--one more word about the minimum wage.

The sensible thing, in light of this divergent research, is to raise the minimum wage modestly and slowly to see what happens. If it goes okay, do it again. Stop when you see significant negative employment effects. Raising it overnight to $15.00 isn't the prudent way to do it--

--especially since it's much easier to raise it, politically, than to lower it.

But now let's take a trip with Elizabeth down memory lane.

(These are the parts of these books I hate: The "getting to know the candidate as a person" parts. I'm going to skim this.)

"Divorce. Disappointment. Deaths. Whenever things got really tough, I would pull out that story and hold it in my mind. I'd hear my daddy's voice, and I'd always feel better. By now, his line was a part of me.

Life gets better, punkin."

That's why I hate these parts of the books.

Okay, flashback over, she's back to the Senate. Senator Alexander really triggered her because after her father had a heart attack her mom managed to support her family on a minimum wage job, which saved their house.

This, she says, is why "These decisions--made in far-off Washington, reached in elegant rooms by confident, well-fed men and women--really matter."

(Of course they do. Who argues otherwise?
But if they matter, they shouldn't be resolved by anecdotal evidence.)

"When President Trump nominates a labor secretary who opposes a living wage and who made his own fortune squeezing fast-food workers, I want to bang my head on the table."

(That's a dishonest, manipulative characterization of the minimum wage debate. Puzder's concerns about making automation more attractive to employers than hiring strike me as reasonable, given how many jobs we've already lost to automation.)

She continues to say there are too many poor people and too many rich people in the US. The rich people are having lavish, self-indulgent parties. The poor are symbolized by a woman she calls Gina.

It's hardworking, decent, salt-of-the-earth Gina versus the greedy Walmart family, which "squeezes it's workers not because it has to, but because it can."

Walmart pays so poorly, she writes, that many of its employees rely on food stamps, rent assistance, and Medicaid just to stay out of poverty. (To be continued ... )

"Those 'low, low prices' are made possible by 'low, low wages--and by the taxes you pay to keep those workers alive on their low, low pay."

"I don't think Walmart ought to funnel profits to shareholders while paying such low wages that taxpayers must pick up the ticket for their employees' food, shelter, and medical care."

Okay, the next paragraph is right up there with "trade wars are good and easy to win." In short, she argues that retailers and fast-food outlets pay wages that are so low that America is paying $153 billion a year to subsidize their workers.

In the footnotes she says she gets this from here: washingtonpost.com/posteverything…. He gets that from here: laborcenter.berkeley.edu/the-high-publi…

Then she writes, "Anyone want to guess what we could do with that mountain of money? We could make every public college tuition-free *and* pay for preschool for every child--and still have tens of billions left over." She proceeds to list things we could do with it ...

"Double all federal research and development--everything: medical, scientific, engineering, climate science, brain mapping" ... there's nothing that's not on this list.

So her theory is that if the government forces Walmart--the country's largest employer--to double its wages, all that will happen is that wages will double, and everything else will remain the same.

She assumes those low, low, prices won't go up, and no one will be added to the unemployment rolls, increasing their need for taxpayer assistance, and Walmart's shareholders won't lose money.

But the thing that I really don't get is this: The argument, basically, is that if only taxpayers weren't subsidizing these workers, they could be subsidizing these workers.

Or subsidizing other workers. If her argument is that subsidizing workers is bad, why isn't the natural conclusion that the money should be returned to the taxpayers?