Big Shot Bill O’Reilly Knows More About Minimum Wage Than Bill Gates

So, big shot Bill O’Reilly agrees with Democrats and says the “pinheads” in the Republican Party should stop opposing the minimum wage increase. As usual, Bill O’Reilly shot his mouth off without knowing what he was talking about.

Let’s look at his comments, and then explain why he — once again — made our “Daily Dunce” slot.

“The Republican Party should really wise up and stop opposing raising the minimum wage. It should be 10 bucks an hour,” O’Reilly proclaimed Wednesday during his opening “Talking Points Memo” segment.

O’Reilly said his proposed $10 an hour minimum wage would apply only to adults, and teenagers should be paid on a lower scale. For starters, Billy boy obviously does not know that the largest group in the U.S. labor force earning minimum wage is teenagers, most are younger than 25, and that most work less than 30 hours a week. With that in mind, the follow-up comment makes zero sense.

“The GOP needs to stop working against working people,” O’Reilly said.

Actually, big shot Bill O’Reilly would be the one — along with the Democrats — who are working against the working people with asinine proposals like this. A clear consensus among economic experts holds all data points show raising the minimum wage costs the economy more jobs, a fact echoed by the president’s Department of Labor.

A study conducted by the Department of Labor concluded that the first minimum wage, 25 cents per hour in 1938, cost the jobs of 30,000 to 50,000 of the 300,000 workers who were covered and had previously earned below the minimum. And a 2007 review of 102 studies that were conducted beginning in the 1990s by David Neumark and William Wascher found, “Indeed, the preponderance of the evidence points to disemployment effects.”

It would seem, contrary to Billy boy’s statements, the Republican Party is working for the American worker, not against. As a former history teacher, it is a bit surprising that he would fail to understand doing the right thing sometimes requires doing it when it is hard, or may result in you becoming immensely unpopular.

But then again, who could argue with Billy boy’s intellectually superior argument?

“Come on, 10 bucks an hour? Babysitters get that,” he said. “This is a simple issue,” he said, “Even the people at MSNBC can understand this. That’s how simple it is.”

Actually, the people at MSNBC can’t understand this, which is why Bill Gates had to explain it to them. “You have to be a bit careful: If you raise the minimum wage, you’re encouraging labor substitution and you’re going to go buy machines and automate things,” Gates told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” last week, which can be viewed below.

“And so within certain limits, you know, it does cause job destruction. If you really start pushing it, then you’re just making a huge trade-off,” he said much to the chagrin of his hosts.

Apparently big shot Bill O’Reilly believes he knows more about the effects of a minimum wage increase than Bill Gates, the U.S. Department of Labor, and economists David Neumark and William Wascher, who reviewed 102 studies on the subject.

I wonder how many Bill O’Reilly has reviewed?

Republican strategist Kate Obenshain fought the good fight in the face of O’Reilly’s bloviating ignorance , that is, when he would stop talking to take a much-needed breath of air, telling O’Reilly he’s taking on the “imperialistic position.”

O’Reilly countered he is taking the “working class position,” having worked for minimum wage himself as a teenager.

Obenshain tried to explain to him that the very people the policy claims to help will lose jobs, and that the free market should decide wages, but O’Reilly remained impervious to the facts.

He suggested all of the studies were propaganda. “It’s just baloney. They’re on the wrong side of it,” meaning Republicans, and apparently every other one of the aforementioned authorities on the subject.

“You’re totally on the wrong side. You’re the social engineer at this point,” Kate Obenshain said.

“If your guys keep doing this, the next election they’ll win will be 80 years from now,” O’Reilly responded. However, this claim that opposing minimum wage increases is detrimental to electoral prospects, is shaky.

Even though a new Fox poll found a 56-percent majority agreed with the president and Democrats the minimum wage should be raised, 1 in 4 registered voters wouldn’t raise it (25 percent) and 15 percent said the government shouldn’t ever be telling businesses what to pay their employees. Hardly conclusive evidence, Bill O’Reilly.

Regardless, that was one of O”Reilly’s comments that wasn’t particularly surprising, because like the issue of immigration, O’Reilly claims to be on the side of the working American, but has not the courage to take the harder, morally and subjectively correct position.

But then again, like his Catholic Church who also supports giving big business cheaper labor to exploit, he is a chameleon who changes his colors as his viewership and popularity require.

Bill O’Reilly was raised by a hard-working American father, was one himself, and worked his way up to the position he is in now. No one, no one, can take that away from him.

Yet it is obvious that on his way up he forgot much about working Americans, and certainly no longer remembers what it is like to be one. In the video below, watch this dunce suggest to Lou Dobbs that we could: 1) afford an increase in the cost of goods, which Dobbs tries to tell him will be the result of a minimum wage increase; and, 2) that, hey, “the folks wouldn’t mind paying it.”