“If higher minimum wages could cure poverty, we could easily end worldwide poverty simply by telling poor nations to legislate higher minimum wages.”

 – Business & Media Institute adviser and George Mason University economist Walter Williams in an April 26 column

     When The New York Times calls your argument “straightforward” and a CNN host calls your opponents’ arguments “a lot of bull,” you can probably count the media on your side.

     That’s exactly what Democrats are seeing in the media’s approach to minimum wage increases – an issue designed to turn out liberal voters in at least six states this fall.

      “Where is Robin Hood when you need him?” asked USA Today’s editorial page on July 24, charging lawmakers with “skewed priorities” for not raising the federal minimum wage. The paper’s editorial board said an increase “would benefit 15 million who earn the minimum or a little more.”

     But according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), 1.9 million workers were reported with wages at or below the minimum in 2005. USA Today did not identify the other 13 million people who were included in its estimate of those making “a little more.” 

     In fact, the percentage of hourly paid workers at or below the minimum wage is at its lowest point since data were first collected in 1979. In 1980, 15.1 percent of those workers were minimum wage or below – compared to 2.5 percent in 2005.

     That’s partly due to the fact that 23 states and the District of Columbia already mandate a higher minimum wage than the federal $5.15, according to data compiled by the National Conference of State Legislatures. Seven states have minimums of $7 and above, and others will gradually rise to $7 in the coming years. The state of Washington has the highest at $7.63, with Oregon not far behind at $7.50.

     Six states – Missouri, Arizona, Colorado, Montana, Nevada and Ohio – have moved toward state minimum wage increases on their November ballots. It has been widely reported that Democrats hope to turn out union voters and other liberal sympathizers for key races in those states.

     And New York Times reporter Edmund L. Andrews claimed “the Democratic argument is straightforward” on July 13. He repeated Democratic politicians’ linkage between private executives’ pay and minimum-wage workers’.

     In his story, titled “Democrats Link Fortunes to Rise in Minimum Wage,” Andrews reported the Democratic line that inflation had reduced the minimum wage in real dollars, and “at the same time, Democrats say, executive pay has risen to ever-higher levels and Congress has regularly approved pay raises for itself.” He quoted liberal Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee: “We’re saying that there will be no pay increases for Congress until there’s an increase in the minimum wage.”

     Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) even proposed a bill tying congressional raises to the minimum wage – so that if one didn’t go up, neither would the other. Columnist Bob Herbert quoted Clinton in the July 3 New York Times: “We can no longer stand by and regularly give ourselves a pay increase while denying a minimum wage increase to the hardworking men and women across this nation.”

     Those Democratic talking points provided the template for the June 24 “In the Money” discussion on CNN. Co-host Jack Cafferty began the dialogue promoting a minimum wage increase:

Cafferty: So you've got to love the Congress. For the fourth time I think in the last five years or something, they vote themselves a pay raise and then almost at the same instant refused to raise the minimum wage in this country, which hasn't been raised for what, almost 10 years?

CNN’s Andy Serwer: Yeah, there was a measure that got 52 votes in the Senate, but it needed 60 because of some procedural poppycock. If the Republicans are smart, I think they would get this thing going to preempt the Democrats from having it as a campaign issue.

CNN’s Jennifer Westhoven: Well, I mean, it's just amazing that they lock it in for themselves, but they can't lock it in for people who are poor. But then there's this other issue, too, which is that this was really brought up by a committee that apparently doesn't even have the power to do it, anyway. So they're making it an issue.

Cafferty: But why don't they want to raise the minimum wage? Where’s – what's the resistance to that idea?

Serwer: Well, it's obviously coming from big business. They say it's inflationary, and it will cause layoffs. I think that's a lot of bull. The thing is, if we're going to have a minimum wage in this country, let's have a minimum wage that keeps up with inflation. Otherwise, scrap it. Get rid of it. I mean, this is craziness.

Cafferty: They can pay a retiring oil company executive a severance package of $400 million, but they can't raise the minimum wage from – what is it – $5.50 to $6? That's unbelievable.

     Many economists would agree that the minimum wage should be “scrapped” rather than raised again.

     Heritage Foundation labor analyst Tim Kane has called the minimum wage the “worst economic law.” He wrote in 2005 that “raising the minimum wage will hurt low-income workers, cost jobs, and hobble the American economy.”

     As for making the minimum wage “keep up with inflation,” as Serwer and the Democrats have suggested: “Indexing wages to inflation was widespread in the 1970s, and now viewed by textbook economics as a key part of the inflationary crisis in 1970s America,” Kane told the Business & Media Institute. He added that “average blue-collar wages have risen, despite the fact that the minimum wage has declined in real terms.”

     It’s productivity, not the minimum wage, that determines how well workers are doing, he said. “The notion that increasing the federal minimum wage will push up real wages is also fiction,” he wrote, explaining that “real wages rise when productivity rises. Labor productivity has gained 26 percent since 1997, and real earnings for non-supervisory workers are up 7 percent.”

     Despite those facts, The New York Times editorialized on July 13 that “the private-sector workers who need a pay raise the most have been waiting nine years and counting for some kind of increase to offset the rising cost of living.” That statement, however, is misleading – sounding as if the same workers have been making minimum wage for nine years straight. In fact, as several economists have pointed out, the majority of workers move on from entry-level minimum wage positions relatively quickly.

     The BLS reported that “about half of workers earning $5.15 or less were under age 25, and about one-fourth of workers earning at or below the minimum wage were age 16-19.”

     And would raising the minimum wage cost jobs? The Los Angeles Times reported on July 15 about a small lab that tested this question. A group of immigrant day laborers in California decided to demand a higher “minimum wage” for themselves, “warning those who accepted less that they would be monitored.” The California minimum wage is $6.75, but the day laborers had been commanding $12.50, the Times said. They voted among themselves to ask for $15/hour.

     As the Times reported, “Since then, some workers say, the number of employers has dropped as word of the new rate spread. For several hours Friday, about 20 workers waited for jobs but no one stopped to hire them.”

     The last time the minimum wage was raised, the National Restaurant Association said, more than “146,000 jobs were cut from restaurant payrolls, with operators postponing plans to hire an additional 106,000 new employees.”

     Though an earlier federal minimum wage proposal didn’t make it through the Senate, another one lives on in a House bill.