While CEO compensation skyrockets, Fox News wants you to think everybody is going to go broke if Democrats enact a minimum wage of $15-an-hour.
A recent report by the Economic Policy Institute found that the average pay of CEOs at the top 350 firms in 2018 was $17.2 million – or $ 14.0 million, using a more conservative measure. That’s a 278-to-1 or 221-to-1 ratio to a typical worker, according to EPI.
But Fox News is suggesting the economy will collapse if workers are guaranteed a living – not exorbitant – wage.
On Fox & Friends this morning, guest Jon Taffer, of Bar Rescue, called the prospect of a $15 minimum wage “horrifying” and one which “no industry can sustain.”
“It's a crisis mode,” Taffer claimed. “You either have to raise prices significantly or you cut labor." He also claimed, "We're going to eliminate employees and we're going to incentivize more robotics."
Cohost Steve Doocy pressed for more details of pending doom. "What happened in Seattle?" he asked.
"Almost a thousand restaurants closed," Taffer answered.
"That's a cautionary tale of what would happen elsewhere if that went through?" Doocy “asked.”
"It is, it was a shock to the industry," Taffer said. "When they talk about raising wages and raising taxes, ehhh, it doesn't make sense to me."
FACT CHECK: When Seattle raised the minimum wage to $15 four years ago, Vox recently reported, “Employers, like restaurant owners, raised the alarm that the new wage would force them to close businesses, raise prices, fire workers, or move their businesses outside of the city limits.” Yet, the number of restaurant jobs has risen by 24,000. The article concludes that those who demanded a higher wage "were right to do so."
Nobody challenged Taffer’s statistics or offered facts on how many restaurants closed each year before the minimum wage hike.
Watch Fox try to scare viewers out of a living wage below, from the September 17, 2019 Fox & Friends.
$## union!” It’s the same thinking that has them pushing to end programs like Social Security.
I’ll give these guys points for consistency. And I have to admit, they’ve demonstrated that keeping a drumbeat going about how all of those concepts are somehow harmful can pay off in a lot of uninformed people striking out against them without having any idea what they are really doing.
Extra money in the hands of working and middle class people is almost entirely ploughed back into goods, services and investment. Give it to the rich and they are more than likely to buy imported vehicles and other luxuries, travel internationally, secrete it offshore or dump vast amounts into the ultimate non-productive investment, property.
Capitalists do not create businesses and jobs because they can afford to, but because they see opportunities to make more money. Premises, machinery and workers are all just necessary expenses, and if they can convince banks/investors that theirs is a viable proposition, getting the money they need is the least of their challenges.
America’s phenomenal economic growth in the 50’s and 60’s was almost entirely fuelled by a well-paid (and unionised) workforce and a middle class hungry to consume the best country could offer. How did the voracious wealthy manage to turn an amazing economy inside out and upside down? Why are these simple truths so hard for so many to grasp?
Speaking of the curvy couch, whenever the bobble-heads leave it for the long table you can pretty much guarantee it’s a #fakenews story, a paid infomercial sales promotion pretending to be consumer information. All that was missing from the segment was the ubiquitous infomercial sales cliche of “but wait there’s more”.
As Brian noted, Taffer’s factoids are likely data-mined bulls—t. Fortune wrote a piece thoroughly debunking the highly flawed Seattle minimum wage study Taffer likely is referencing:
https://fortune.com/2017/06/27/seattle-minimum-wage-study-results-impact-15-dollar-uw/
Oh, and here’s a local Seattle publication discussing why so many restaurants are closing before the wage hike. It includes some dire predictions by an anti minimum wage lobbyist but he even estimates in a good year 400 Seattle restaurants will close.
https://www.seattlemag.com/article/why-are-so-many-seattle-restaurants-closing-lately
The restaurant business is notoriously low margin. In my youth I worked in a restaurant owned by Marriott. Marriott shut our restaurant down because it only netted a 6% margin. So certainly a dramatic rise in wages will effect restaurants’ budgets but adjustments can be made including, yes, the inevitable menu price increase.
Oh NewsHounds, please quit posting on Fox News business ‘news’ nonsense. Fox’s business segments make me vomit in my mouth and inevitably I end up vomiting lots of bile in the comment section! 🤣
We’ve tried to fix our economy by lowering taxes on the rich about a zillion times, why not try a living wage for all—just once? The Oligarchs are afraid of the potential success of this idea.
