Nobody Told Sen. Elizabeth Warren that There Would Be Math in Politics

The Blaze reports that MA Sen. Elizabeth Warren finds math to be too hard to work out.

Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren during a hearing of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions last week asked why the current federal minimum wage rate is only $7.25 and not $22 an hour.

“If we started in 1960, and we said that, as productivity goes up — that is, as workers are producing more — then the minimum wage is going to go up the same,” the Massachusetts senator said during the hearing.

“And, if that were the case, the minimum wage today would be about $22 an hour. So, my question … is what happened to the other $14.75?” she asked University of Massachusetts professor of economics Arindrajit Dube:

There’s video of the exchange at the link. It shows a senator more comfortable with some shadowy conspiracy to keep wages down than with working out the numbers. Her guest actually compares the minimum wage to wages earned at the very top of the economic ladder, oblivious to the fact that some skills command more than others, and those with no skills tend to command the least.

Democrats tend to call for an increase on the minimum wage to go along with their calls for higher taxes on the “wealthy,” elastically defined to mean whoever they feel like raising taxes on. They call for minimum wage hikes whenever they have no core policy to chase after and want to put Republicans on the defensive.

Both amount to a forced payment that distorts economic reality. They never account for the fact that minimum wage hikes tend to depress hiring while raising the costs of goods and services. It just doesn’t enter their thinking. It certainly doesn’t enter Sen. Warren’s thinking.