http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/14/opinion/economists-hit-back-in-the-minimum-wage-wars.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0
Economists Hit Back in the Minimum-Wage Wars
*To the Editor:*
Last month, The New York Times published an article
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/10/us/politics/fight-over-minimum-wage-illustrates-web-of-industry-ties.html>
about the Employment Policies Institute, a nonprofit that has been
aggressively campaigning against increasing the minimum wage.
Funded by the restaurant industry, a conservative foundation and unnamed
others, the group has taken out full-page ads warning the public that
increasing the minimum wage would worsen unemployment and poverty.
On Feb. 27, the group expanded its tactics to red-baiting. Six hundred
economists, including seven Nobel laureates, had sent an open letter
<http://www.epi.org/minimum-wage-statement/> to President Obama and to
congressional leaders urging that they raise the minimum wage and
allaying concerns that such a move would create unemployment.
In a direct response, the institute took out a full-page ad
<http://www.minimumwage.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/EPI_NYT_MEMO.pdf>
in The Times that singled us out from the other 600 economists.
The ad --- using excerpts from quotes from our work that identified us
as Marxists, praised Hugo Chávez, the late president of Venezuela, and
so on --- tried to dismiss our expertise and impugn that of the other
592 economists who signed the letter.
We are outraged by the use of this McCarthyesque tactic to undermine
informed public discourse and the democratic political process. Now more
than ever --- beset as we are by outrageous levels of inequality,
political corruption and environmental destruction --- economists,
politicians and the broader public need to begin thinking outside the box.
The capitalist system has had more than 200 years to get it right; isn't
it more than reasonable, even imperative, to broaden our discourse about
economic possibilities?
JULIE MATTHAEI
PAUL ZAREMBKA
Wellesley, Mass., March 13, 2014
//
/The writers are professors of economics at Wellesley College and the
University at Buffalo, SUNY, respectively. //The letter was also signed
by the six other economists named in the ad./
On 2/27/2014 7:47 PM, zarembka wrote:
600+ economists signed on to raising the minimum wage, see:
www.epi.org/minimum-wage-statement .
So, we get a reaction, a full-page ad in the /New York Times/, Feb.
27, p. 9:
www.minimumwage.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/EPI_NYT_MEMO.pdf
Paul
--
==== */Research in Political Economy/
<http://www.emeraldinsight.com/books.htm?issn=0161-7230>* (since 1977) |
Editor's *webpage <http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/%7Ezarembka>*
/*Contradictions: Finance, Greed, and Labor Unequally Paid*/ (2013)
/*Revitalizing Marxist Theory for Today's Capitalism*/ (2011), with R.Desai
/*The National Question and the Question of Crisis*/ (2010)
/*The Hidden History of 9-11
<http://catalog.sevenstories.com/products/hidden-history-of-911>*/ (2nd
ed., Seven Stories Press)
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