Photo via @LisPower1/Twitter
June 9, 2021, 11:36 am
Conservative economist, Trump fave, and the man responsible for the dismal failure known as “trickle down economics” Art Laffer would like you to know that if you’re young, already poor, or one of the many marginalized persons in the U.S., you aren’t worth $15 per hour “in most cases.” He does not state exactly what you are worth during his Fox News interview, but it’s not the average cost of a smartphone charging cord or a small family’s McDonald’s order.
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“For those people, Sandra, who are coming into the labor workforce brand fresh, not old-timers who’ve been around for a while—the poor, the minorities, the disenfranchised, those with less education, young people who haven’t had the job experience—these people aren’t worth $15 an hour in most cases.”
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So according to Laffer, if you were already put at a disadvantage in this country due to accident of birth and that poverty and discrimination made it impossible for you to afford higher education, you don’t deserve a living wage because of reasons.
Laffer somehow managed to use this as a reason to argue against the $15 an hour minimum wage, which has already become less than a living wage in most areas in the U.S. as cost of living and especially housing has continued to rise at an alarming pace.
“When you have a $15 an hour minimum wage, [workers] don’t get that first job, they don’t get the requisite skills to earn above the minimum wage,” he said. “And after a few years they become unemployable, and after they become unemployable, they become hostile.”
This makes little sense considering the fact that if $15 was made to be the federal minimum wage, all jobs would naturally have to offer that wage at minimum, meaning the number of jobs would stay the same. Workers would just be paid more and might even be more productive without the monstrous weight of abject poverty dragging them down, regardless of what Laffer might think they’re worth.
Originally, the topic was supposed to be about the automation of underpaid jobs, which has been held over workers’ heads as a threat against their organizing for better pay and conditions for decades now without it ever really happening. The argument that there will magically be fewer jobs if the wages are raised has also been debunked by the reality currently operating in areas of the U.S. where a $15 minimum wage has already been passed.
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Laffer also seems to hint here that the real threat is workers becoming “hostile,” at which point they might decide that the entire system that the economist benefits from needs to be drastically changed and it will be Laffer who no longer has a job.
Frankly, it’s incredible he still has any kind of job now considering the fact that his entire name to fame turned out to be a cynical joke as the “trickle” that was supposed to go from the rich to the poor never manifested, as insulting as it was to begin with. Add that on to the fact that he thinks he can go on air and tell those who are already screwed that they don’t deserve to not be screwed and will be replaced with robots if they complain, and people are not very happy with Laffer over on the ol’ Twitter dot com.
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*First Published: June 9, 2021, 11:36 am
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