Many years ago, my mother (may she rest in peace)
forwarded an article on Facebook that was clearly fake news, and after doing
some investigation, and I called her out on it. She wasn't happy about it and
thought I was trying to make her look stupid, but I explained that without
looking at all the facts before forwarding articles, she was perpetrating lies
and spreading misinformation, feeding the beast of misinformation. Eventually
she came to know that I wasn't trying to publicly shame or her belittle her and
that we were on the same side.
I had to make a point then and I have to now…..
This morning another relative (who I will not mention
and who has told me he has my feed blocked so he doesn’t have to see my
bleeding heart liberal rants) posted an article on his Facebook wall, claiming
California’s new $15 minimum wage is killing off restaurants.
The article, “Restaurant Die-Off Is First Casualty of California’s $15 Minimum Wage,”
is posted on the extreme right website, “The Federalist Papers Project, and it
writes about the demise of 60 restaurants in the San Francisco Bay
area.
The article hints (without saying so) is that giving poor people a livable
wage is bad for the economy, but it ignores some other facts, including those
referenced in its own source.
First it must be pointed out that the San Francisco Bay area has roughly
18,000 restaurants. The closure of sixty restaurants is not even a blip on the
restaurant radar in the area. It constitutes less than one third of
one percent of all restaurants in the area. A number that has no
impact on the area’s economy, and still leaves diners with plenty of choices,
and according to a recent CNN article is the same percentage someone has of
being killed during a foreign-born terrorist attack.
More importantly, the article cites as proof, another
article from the East Bay Times, certainly not a right-wing newspaper, with the
headline, “What’s Behind the Spate of
Recent Bay Area Restaurant Closures?” Though the author, Brian
Thomas, references the article, I do not think he ever it, because if he had he
would see that while the increase in minimum wage is given as one reason for
the closures, nearly all business owners claimed there are several other
factors such as the areas decades long low unemployment (between 3.5% and
4.0%,), the increased cost of commercial real estate, and the overall high cost
of living in the area as contributing factors. Many individuals
interviewed for the article even admitted that perhaps their business models
were outdated, making them less competitive.
In the referenced East Bay Time article, Gwyneth Borden, executive director of
the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, clearly places the blame on the labor
shortage in the area, and one business owner, Randy Nelson, blames an upcoming
50% rent increase as the culprit for business closing.
So why blame
the demise of the restaurants on the minimum wage increase?
It’s the
same as always. It demonizes and blames the people who benefit from
the increased wage-poor people. It points the finger at people of
color and other lazy people for not working harder to raise themselves out of
poverty so they don’t need the safety net of a minimum wage. In
other words, blaming the victim which is a standard practice of the right.
But the
Federalist Papers Project’s article is just propaganda, like everything else on
their website. They feed their base lies that reinforce their
preconceived notions that poor people are sucking off the system and ruining
our country.
What bothers
me the most is “my relative” believes this crap he reads, and he is a smart,
educated person. According to him, he is the smartest in the
family (obviously, a little joke,) but it is no joke that there are thousands
and thousands of other educated people just like him that will read an article
like this and believe it to be the truth, when it fact it is just kindling to
fuel the fire of lies and deception, and separate us as Americans.
Poor people
are not to blame for the ills of this country. They are not powerful
enough to have any impact on anything, especially our economy.
I will end
this rant with one question…..Who does have the power and money to truly impact
the economy and the court of public opinion?
(I am a
horrible editor of what I write, and spell check often doesn’t catch my errors
because I type words instead of characters. There may be many typing
errors.)
The two
articles cited in this post are:
