Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s
claim that the world will “end in 12 years” unless climate change is
tackled was accepted as a fact by two-thirds of Democrats, even though
she said herself that only those with the “social intelligence of a sea
sponge” could actually believe it.
The New York Democrat drew
mockery from Republicans after she made the doomsday warning in a bid to
convince people that radical action against climate change is needed.
“Millennials
and people, you know, Gen Z and all these folks that will come after us
are looking up and we’re like: ‘The world is gonna end in 12 years if
we don’t address climate change and your biggest issue is how are we
gonna pay for it?'” Ocasio-Cortez said. A few months later she repeated
the claim again.
Earlier this month, however, Ocasio-Cortez
backtracked on the gloomy forecast and instead blamed the Republican
Party for taking her humor and sarcasm literally.
"This is a technique of the GOP, to take dry humor + sarcasm literally and 'fact check' it," she wrote.
But it appears that more than two-thirds of surveyed Democrats took her literally.
A Rasmussen poll,
conducted earlier this week, found 67 percent of Democrats believing
that the U.S. has only 12 years to avert the “disastrous and irreparable
damage to the country and the world” stemming from climate change. Out
of all total likely voters, 48 percent of respondents believed the
apocalyptic claim.
Ocasio-Cortez has emerged as the key Democratic voice on how to tackle climate change, proposing the Green New Deal resolution that seeks to radically reorganize the economy to ensure climate change is tackled.
The
proposal was endorsed by a number of 2020 presidential candidates even
before the disastrous rollout of the proposal, which included the
now-infamous FAQ document that suggested making air travel obsolete and
supporting those “unwilling to work.”
Senate Democrats in March
failed to reach the 60 votes necessary to begin debate on the Green New
Deal proposal, with 42 Democrats and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., voting
“present.”
The
lawmakers said they didn’t vote for the proposal because it was brought
to a vote by Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for
political purposes.
Why Did Bar AOC Used to Work at Shut Down? Because of $15 Minimum Wage SHE Supports
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (shown) had been
accused
of stealing tips from a coworker at a bar where she once waitressed.
Yet she also could perhaps be accused of helping steal the jobs, in a
manner of speaking, from workers at its sister establishment, in which
she also waitressed. This is because iconic New York City restaurant The
Coffee Shop closed its doors forever — largely because of its state’s
new $15 minimum wage — which Ocasio-Cortez supported.
The Coffee Shop was no failed business model. It was “frequented by
A-list celebrities and featured on ‘Sex and the City,’” wrote
Investor’s Business Daily.
Opened by former Wilhelmina models Charles Milite, Eric Petterson, and
Carolyn Benitez in 1990, “it quickly became a sceney fashion
destination,” added
Eater New York
last year. “There was even a long-standing rumor that the restaurant
only hired aspiring models as servers” (though Ocasio-Cortez’ employment
apparently debunks this rumor).
What isn’t a rumor is that the minimum wage minimized the
restaurant’s viability. “The times have changed in our industry,” owner
Milite told the
New York Post. “The rents are very high and now the minimum wage is going up and we have a huge number of employees.”
If it makes Milite and the 150 now unemployed feel any better, Ocasio-Cortez
did stop by last year, one last time, to pay her respects, a bit like a mafia hit man attending his latest victim’s funeral.
It has long been known that minimum-wage laws cost jobs and hurt
economies. Famed late economist and Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman not
only made this point, but also
added in a 1966 op-ed:
The groups that will be hurt the most are
the low-paid and the unskilled. The ones who remain employed will
receive higher wage rates, but fewer will be employed. As Prof. James
Tobin, who was a member of president [sic] Kennedy’s Council of Economic
Advisers, recently wrote: “People who lack the capacity to earn a
decent living need to be helped, but they will not be helped by
minimum-wage laws, trade-union wage pressures or other devices which
seek to compel employers to pay them more than their work is worth. The
more likely outcome of such regulations is that the intended
beneficiaries are not employed at all.
This realization is what helped shake another famed economist,
Professor Thomas Sowell, from his youthful Marxism. While doing a summer
internship with the Department of Labor, he researched the minimum wage
and not only discovered it cost jobs, but also something else: The
labor-department bureaucrats
didn’t even care. Their bureaucracy was getting a lot of money via administration of the minimum wage laws.
Friedman’s and Sowell’s position prevails in the wider economist community, too. As columnist Larry Elder
noted Thursday, quoting from a survey of economists commissioned by the Employment Policies Institute:
“Nearly three-quarters of these US-based
economists oppose a federal minimum wage of $15.00 per hour. [Does the
last quarter work for the Department of Labor?]
“The majority of surveyed economists
believe a $15.00 per hour minimum wage will have negative effects on
youth employment levels (83 percent), adult employment levels (52
percent), and the number of jobs available (76 percent).
“When economists were asked what effect a
$15.00 per hour minimum wage will have on the skill level of
entry-level positions, 8 out of 10 economists (80 percent) believe
employers will hire entry-level positions with greater skills.
“When economists were asked what effect a
$15.00 per hour minimum wage will have on small businesses with fewer
than 50 employees, nearly 7 out of 10 economists (67 percent) believe it
would make it harder for them to stay in business.”
None of this is hard to understand. An employee brings a certain amount of
value to a business. Now, if a worker’s labor will add $13-an-hour in value, can you pay him $15 hourly?
Creating a minimum wage above many existing workers’ value leaves employers only three choices:
• Fire those workers and, when possible, replace them with more
skilled/more productive employees who yield greater value than the
minimum-wage salaries you must pay.
• Fire those workers and, when economically feasible, automate.
• When neither of the first two is possible, close up shop — ergo, the erstwhile Coffee Shop.
Option one gets at why minimum-wage laws hurt low-skilled workers
(who are inordinately young, black, and/or Hispanic). After all, if for
$15 hourly you can hire a 23-year-old with some experience, why would
you hire a green 17-year-old or a young inner-city fellow with no
experience? You’re going to want to get what you’re paying for.
Thus, minimum-wage laws make it more difficult for young people to
land that important first job and gain the experience that can lead to
better employment. And without work, which “ennobles man” and can give life meaning, young people are more likely to be out on the streets causing trouble and joining gangs.
Yet as the Foundation for Economic Freedom put it last year, it can
be argued that minimum-wage laws were actually designed to kick the
“wrong people” out of work. In fact, it relates in the video below that
“early 20
th-century socialist thought leader Sidney Webb
wrote an article entitled ‘The Economic Theory of a Legal Minimum Wage,’
in which he described married women; the disabled; and other, quote,
‘invalids,’ unquote, as parasites who were taking work from able-bodied
men. See, it was understood by many early on that minimum-wage laws were
there to price the ‘less fit’ out of the marketplace.”
Apropos to this, note that prior to minimum-wage laws’ advent, the United States’ black unemployment was actually
slightly lower than white unemployment — this reversed after these laws’ birth.
It’s not fair to say these laws are the only cause of higher minority
unemployment or that all those advocating them today have bigoted
motives. But many are demagogues who callously use minimum-wage appeals
to gain power. Moreover, we could wonder if some understand the effect
these laws have — but want higher minority unemployment so that they can
blame “white supremacy” and portray themselves as saviors of minority
America.
At best, reflected in minimum-wage laws is minimal thinking.
