Cashin’ In offered its panel of well-paid experts yesterday to attack weigh in on Mitt Romney’s proposal to raise the minimum wage. Not one of them appears to be trying to make ends meet on anything close to the minimum wage (though to listen to regular Tracy Byrnes’ incessant whining, you’d think she was). Nor do any appear to be the kind of struggling small retail business owners the prosperous-looking panel insisted would be endangered if the wage-hike was effected. If all you knew about the subject came from this segment, you’d think that minimum wage is like living high on the hog at business-owners’ expense.

Jonathan Hoenig put forth the suggestion under discussion - that the minimum wage should be abolished. He called it a “government force, so of course it destroys jobs. It violates the rights of both employers and employees to act in their own self interest… They have to make that judgment, not a government bureaucrat. And just like unions who force artificially high wages, of course, the net result is a lack of productivity, a destruction of productivity, and a destruction of jobs.”

Host Cheryl Casone noted that unemployment is worst among teenagers. She added, “If there is going to be a hike in the minimum wage, small businesses could say I’m not going to hire any more kids, I’m going to go for free interns.”

Lone Democrat Jehmu Greene said, “The minimum wage is clearly in all of our best interests.  I listen to Jonathan, he sounds like a broken record. We’re not going to get rid of the minimum wage, stop complaining about it, Jonathan… The more people make, the better consumers they’re going to be. They take that money and minimum wage workers, they spend all of their additional funding.”

Hoenig sneered, “Spend it, right. Talk about a broken record.”

Greene continued, “They spend it in local neighborhoods, and it boosts the economy, especially for small retail businesses.”

Does Tracy Byrnes ever go a day without complaining about how unfair life is for her? Today’s whine was, “But that’s the biggest problem, Jehmu. Small retail businesses are forced to pay a salary they might not necessarily be able to afford. You know, my wage is not tied or indexed to inflation... So why then do we do this for some and not the others? Look, I think it is unfair to require a company to pay a certain amount of money for a job that you and I don’t know what it is.”

Casone asked, “What about the states?” She mentioned that 17 states were either raising the minimum wage or considering it. “Maybe this isn’t a federal issue?” she suggested.

John Layfield agreed and made a joke out of it. “I don’t think it is a federal issue… To the point that you raise people’s wages they’re gonna be able to be more productive consumers, then let’s just go with that and raise the minimum wage to $500 an hour based on that… The minimum wage affects very few people to me… This minimum wage to me is not really that big a deal.” Easy for him to say. 

Comment: As Greene noted, there’s a very good argument for raising the minimum wage, especially as laid out in a recent Salon article by Dean Baker and  John Scmitt:

(A) large body of research shows that increases in the minimum wage at the national, state and even local levels have not cost jobs. That may sound counterintuitive; after all, economists always say that when the price rises, demand falls. This should mean that with a higher minimum wage, employers will want fewer workers.

The real story, however, is somewhat more complex. Employers not only care about the wages they pay, they also care about workers’ productivity, and the rise in the pay by itself may cause workers to be more productive.

Yet, there was barely enough time for Greene to talk much less delve into the data. Host Casone was either unaware of this research or else deliberately refrained from bringing it to the “we report, you decide” network’s viewers’ attention.