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Want to talk about a $15/hour minimum wage? Want to toast Sen. Rodney Tom’s (R-D-R??-WA-48) decision to retire from the Senate? Want to talk about King County Proposition 1 and mass transit? Then please join us tonight for an evening of politics over a pint at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally.

We meet every Tuesday at the Roanoke Park Place Tavern, 2409 10th Ave E, Seattle. The starting time is 8:00 pm, but some folks show up earlier for dinner.

Can’t make it to Seattle? Check out another Washington state DL over the next week. The Tri-Cities and Shelton chapters also meet this Tuesday. The Lakewood and South Seattle chapters meet this Wednesday. For Thursday, the Tacoma chapter meets. And next Monday, the Aberdeen, Yakima and Olympia chapters meet.

With 213 chapters of Living Liberally, including nineteen in Washington state, four in Oregon, and three more in Idaho, chances are excellent there’s a chapter meeting somewhere near you.

If there’s one thing I dread about the income inequality debate in general, and the minimum wage debate in particular, it’s those occasional uncomfortable moments when the anti-union, anti-immigrant, anti-semitic Henry Ford is brought up as an icon of demand-side economics. In 1914 Ford famously implemented the $5 Day (about $117 in 2014 dollars), more than twice the $2.25 prevailing wage at the time for a 9-hour auto factory shift. The story goes—and it’s a story perpetuated by Ford himself—that the goal was to pay his workers enough to transform them into car buyers themselves, thus increasing sales.

It’s a great story, and one that neatly illustrates the demand-side arguments. But unfortunately, it’s bullshit. No, the real reason Ford more than doubled his workers’ compensation was that he came to believe that paying higher wages would conversely lower his labor costs. And he was ultimately proven right.

An early 20th century assembly line job was brutal and brutally monotonous work—hour after hour of performing relentlessly quick, repetitive, and often dangerous tasks. For example, in 1916, nearly 200 severed fingers and more than 75,000 cuts, burns, and puncture wounds were recorded at Ford’s Highland Park plant alone.

So as you can expect, morale was low at Ford’s factories, and the turnover rate high. Absurdly high. As much as 300 percent annually. Throughout the year of 1913, Ford hired 52,000 workers in order to maintain an average workforce of only 14,000. Every new worker required weeks of costly training and break-in. Assembly lines sometimes screeched to a halt for want of enough qualified workers. Absenteeism and turnover made it impossible for Ford to keep up production and produce cars at the low prices his business model demanded.

And so when Ford introduced the $5 Day the next year, it was with an eye toward reducing turnover, thus lowering labor costs and ramping up production. And it worked! Turnover plummeted and productivity soared. The rest of the auto industry initially dismissed Ford as crazy, but they all soon followed his example.

And here’s the thing: once the other auto makers matched Ford’s wages, taking away his competitive advantage in the labor market, turnover didn’t revert to the bad old $2.25 days. Better paid workers do a better job. They’re more loyal. More productive. Less likely to call in sick. And less likely to constantly be on the lookout for a better deal someplace else.

Yes, Ford’s $5 Day did help kickstart the trend toward higher wages that ultimately primed the demand side pump on which our modern consumer-driven economy was built. So that part of the story is true, at least in effect, if not intent. But the benefits to Ford were more direct and immediate. Higher wages delivered better workers, and lower labor costs.

And those are the same sort of financial benefits employers bemoaning the cost of a $15 minimum wage have refused to factor into their equations.

Well, it looks like we won’t have Rodney Tom to kick around anymore:

Senate Majority Leader Rodney Tom, a titular Democrat who leads a Republican-dominated coalition, announced Monday that he is leaving the Legislature for reasons of health and family.

Yeah, either that or he has some polling that shows how widely hated he is in his own district. Fucking turncoat.

Republicans have thus far failed to field a viable challenger to Tom, because, you know, he’s basically a Republican. So his Eastside seat sure does look like a strong pickup opportunity for the Democrats and former Kirkland mayor Joan McBride. That said, unless Tim Sheldon can be persuaded to caucus with Democrats next session it’s hard to see senate Dems regaining control in November.

UPDATE: I guess it would be remiss of me to let Tom’s retirement pass without mentioning that one of my greatest regrets as a blogger is that perhaps my favorite post of all time was written in the service of supporting his election to the state senate. My bad.

I suppose because a 15.6 percent cut in Metro bus service would be totally all right:

THE campaign for King County Proposition 1 says 600,000 hours of Metro bus service would be cut if voters don’t approve the measure.

At best, that’s disingenuous. The facts matter when asking voters to increase car tabs from $20 to $60 and to raise the sales tax 0.1 percent on the April 22 ballot.

In fact, Metro has known since at least March 13 that better-than-expected tax collections would reduce the expected cut down to 550,000 hours. That’s because King County’s trampoline rebound from the Great Recession netted Metro $5.4 million more last year than had been projected. Metro is now forecast to receive $13.7 million more in 2014 and $15.9 million more in 2015.

First of all, the editors at the Seattle Times are the last people who can straight-facedly critique the math of others. But Jesus… talk about nitpicking. Are they seriously making the case that voters should reject Proposition 1 because Metro only faces a 550,000-hour 15.6 percent cut in bus service as opposed to the 600,000-hour 17 percent cut threatened? Accept their math and the region is still facing a devastating cut in bus service at a time there is demand to expand it (not to mention our region’s growing backlog of deteriorating roads—40 percent of Prop 1’s revenue goes to road repairs). If this is the strongest case the editors can make against Prop 1, it only emphasizes the need to pass it.

As to modestly rising sales tax forecasts, yeah, that’s true. But sales tax revenue is notoriously volatile. Indeed, this recent uptick in revenue comes on the heels of a 10-year $1.2 billion sales tax revenue shortfall from previous forecasts. So much for forecasting sales tax revenue. And with reserve funds now standing near nil, Metro has little margin of error before a couple bad quarters forces additional cuts.

Look, time has run out. Prop 1 isn’t perfect, but after two years of waiting for Olympia to stop dicking around with our transit funding, this is the only option we have left. Pass Prop 1 or cut 600,000 hours of Metro bus service—give or take a 100,000 hours.

– Stop telling survivors they must report to the police

– Corporations are avoiding their taxes in Oregon (and elsewhere, doy, but that’s another discussion).

– Divorce reform may be one of the scariest ideas I’ve ever heard.

– I have not been impressed with Reuven Carlyle’s time in the House, but maybe he’ll run for Senate. Sure.

– The Mysterious Disappearance

Last week’s contest was won by zzippy. It was Queens, NY.

This week’s location is a random location from Google’s 45 degree views, good luck!

Exodus 21:20-21
If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished, but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his property.

 

The Point: Is the US ready for yet another Bush?

Equal Pay for Equal Work:

• White House: When women succeed, America succeeds:
• WaPo: Democrats highlight equal pay push.
• Ann Telnaes: The GOP offers kisses to women.
• Sam Seder: How Obama is helping close the pay gap.
• Mitch McConnell’s equal pay solution.
• Michael Brooks: Women’s rights are so distracting says Mitch McConnell.

Ann Telnaes: Childless couples need not apply in Utah.

Jon on Sean Hannity’s Spring Break alarmism.

The Week in Scott Brown:

• WaPo: What New Hampshire voters think of Scott Brown.
• Maddow: Clueless Scott Brown, Part I
• Maddow: Clueless Scott Brown, Part II

Mark Fiore: The United States of John Roberts.

Obama: Civil Rights.

This Week in Torture:

• Jon: Dick Cheney and Back to the Torture.
• Matt Binder: “Tough guy” Sean Hannity still won’t undergo waterboarding himself.

Thom: The Good, The Bad, and The Very, Very Ugly.

Sharpton: Eric Holder calls out Republican racism

Rep. Vance McAllister (R-LA) get Famous:

• Young Turks: Kissing Congressman caught on tape.
• Young Turks: Are self-righteous religious politicians full of shit?

White House: West Wing Week.

Richard Fowler: Paul Ryan’s new pathway to prosperity.

Bill Maher: The G.O.P. has become talk radio (via Crooks and Liars).

Stephen Colbert News:

• WaPo: The real Stephen Colbert.
• Colbert on interviewing in character
• Bill-O-the-Clown: Stephen Colbert is destroying America.
• Ed: Limbaugh scared shitless about Colbert.
• Stephen Colbert will replace David Letterman.
• Jimmy Fallon on Stephen Colbert’s new gig
• Sharpton: Right Wingers freak-out over Colbert announcement.
• A little theater with Stephen Colbert and Steve Carell
• Limbaugh sees WAR in Colbert pick.
• Seven delightful instances of Stephen Colbert out of character.
• Stephen with advice for the New York Times
• Did Letterman lie about his replacement?
• Stephen Colbert reacts to David Letterman’s retirement

Young Turks: Hillary joins Shrub in the thrown shoe club.

Thom: Climate deniers use same tactics as tobacco companies.

Ari Melber: No escape for Christie as noose tightens.

The Travesty of Affordable Health Care:

• Ed and Pap: The Koch brother’s ObamaCare windfall
• Matt Binder: Koch brothers are profiting from Obamacare
• Jon: The ObamaCare non-Hard sell.
• David Pakman: Glenn Beck melts down over ObamaCare numbers.
• John Fugelsang (with Ed): Epic ObamaCare rant:
• Matt Binder: Republicans who attack Obamacare also…fight for it?
• Maddow: How Republicans put too-many-eggs in the ObamaCare basket
• Ed: WingNutjobbers in denial over enrollment numbers.
• Lawrence O’Donnell: GOP swallows 7.1 million bitter pills.

John Boehner’s bullshit excuse for failure to extend unemployment benefits.

LBJ adviser on how Obama should handle Boehner.

This Week in Republican Voter Suppression:

• Ed: Republicans making the American voting process “3rd World-like’
• Chris Hayes and Rev. Sharpton: Obama’s frontal assault on GOP’s bogus, racist voter suppression efforts.
• Farron Cousins with Howard Nations: What motivates Republican racism?

Alex Wagner: Jim DeMint claims, “Big Government didn’t free the slaves”.

Young Turks: Republicans finally surrender on Benghazi.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

Omigod I wish this OneSeattle website wasn’t a parody. But many a truth is said in jest:

From the employer’s perspective, compensation is about a whole lot more than wages. Just consider a typical cost breakdown for an average low-skilled minimum wage employee:

• Base wage: $9.32/hour
• Sick leave: up to $0.50/hour
• Vacation: approximately $1.50/hour
• Payroll taxes: $1.60/hour
• Breaks: $0.50/hour (approximately, depends on shift length)
• Training: $1.00/hour (prorated based on turnover)
• Employee food discount: $0.50/hour (depending on girth)
• Cost of nonwork time: $0.25/hour (i.e. texting while on the clock)
• TOTAL: $15.17

Funny stuff. And disturbingly believable. The whole website reads like the unfiltered id of the restaurant industry.

UPDATE: Shit. Now I’m getting 404 Errors. Have the humorless pricks in the restaurant industry already had the site taken down? That would be fast. I guess there’s always the Google cache.

UPDATE, UPDATE: Back up over here!

Hey Uber drivers… welcome to the wonderful world of unregulated for-hire, where the TNCs can just cut you off without notice, for any reason and any time, and you have absolutely no legal recourse:

“My rating went to a 4.6 (out of a five-star rating) and they suspended me. They just turned my phone off. They didn’t give me a warning; they didn’t give me a week’s notice. I just woke up in the morning to go to work and my phone was off. And they’ve done that to a lot of people,” said former Uber driver, Will Anderson. “That’s huge—if you make an investment in a vehicle and you have a family you need to feed.”

Hooray for the free market and the efficiencies it imposes! No doubt Uber knows what it is doing, so we should just trust them.

A panel of TNC and town car drivers will be holding a public forum to air concerns about Uber’s “predatory practices” on Sunday, April 13, 2 pm, at the Yesler Community Center, 917 E Yesler Way in Seattle. Seattle City Council members Kshama Sawant and Mike O’Brien are scheduled to be there.

If you’ve ever wondered what it tastes like to lick Brad Smith’s asshole, just ask the editors at the Seattle Times:

THE state’s two biggest companies took a gamble on Washington a few years back, and at long last the state has finally paid off.

Back in 2011, Boeing and Microsoft pledged $25 million apiece for the Washington State Opportunity Scholarship program. The program, run by the College Success Foundation, defrays costs for low- and middle-income students when they major in science, technology, engineering, math and health at Washington colleges. Each student is eligible for as much as $17,000.

So Boeing and Microsoft save hundreds of millions of dollars a year in state tax breaks and tax loopholes—denying the state the funds necessary to adequately fund higher education and other crucial investments—and yet we should cheer them as civic heroes for spending a mere $25 million each (0.03 percent of their $164 billion in combined 2013 revenue) to subsidize educating their own workforce?

Hooray for capitalism!

The “gamble” Boeing and Microsoft took was that this feeble gesture would provide political cover for their roles in perpetuating the structural revenue deficit that undermines Washington’s K-12 and higher education systems as a whole. And it was a gamble that has paid off handsomely under the credulous watch of our state’s editorial boards.

I got an email from Patty Murray’s campaign yesterday about this year’s Golden Tennis Shoes. And oh hey, Elizabeth Warren is speaking this year.

Every year, I host the Golden Tennis Shoe Awards to honor ordinary citizens who have done extraordinary things to help improve their communities and the lives of those around them.

I’m thrilled to announce that my friend, Senator Elizabeth Warren, is going to join us this year to keynote the Golden Tennis Shoe Awards and help me congratulate these amazing Washingtonians.

It’s interesting to see what Warren’s role is in the party as a relatively new Senator. When someone like her is headlining a big deal fundraiser like the Golden Tennis Shoes, it probably says something about the left flank of the Senate. You can say that sort of thing doesn’t play outside of Mass, but you know, she’s taking it on the road here, because she has a popular platform.

There is this weird counterintuitive and counterfactual meme being put forth by the anti-minimum wagers that argues that a lack of a “tip credit” could ironically end up hurting the incomes of tipped employees. For example, from an anonymous server writing in The Stranger (because that’s apparently their new journalism business model—anonymous people writing for free):

Tips are an important part of my income. As someone who makes a great living on tips, I don’t want the awesome culture and great jobs created by Seattle’s restaurant boom to disappear. I do not believe customers will keep tipping at the percentages they do now if they know my base wage has gone up 60 percent. And if that’s how customers respond, the end result will be a drastically lower income for those of us who work in restaurants and bars—gender aside.

Oh. Well. She is anonymous after all. So perhaps we should just defer to her “belief” and scrap this whole foolish $15 minimum wage endeavor entirely? Best intentions and all that, but my bad.

Oh please.

First, let’s be clear that this argument is not just totally speculative; it is also somewhat illogical. As an episode of Freakonomics Radio pointed out last year, tipping isn’t exactly a rational economic exercise. It’s a matter of custom. So most Americans tip out of a combination of habit and peer pressure—15 percent if you’re a cheapskate, 20 percent if you’re not, or double the sales tax rounded up here in Seattle if you’re lazy like me. In fact, Seattle’s tipping culture is so ingrained, that it’s hard to imagine a minimum wage hike impacting most consumers behavior with or without a tip credit. Indeed, if restaurant owners carry through on their threat to raise prices, then it is at least equally reasonable to speculate that tipped income will go up, as diners simply add their customary tip percent onto the new pricier bill.

Further undermining this anti-$15 speculation is the total absence of supporting facts. I mean, it’s not like we haven’t raised the minimum wage many times before—by a whopping 85 percent for tipped employees here in Washington state between 1988 and 1989—and with no tip credit! This isn’t ancient history. And yet there is zero evidence of mass restaurant closures, job losses, or a decline in tipping in the aftermath of this precipitous wage hike. The economic data is there. If there was even the flimsiest evidence to suggest a negative economic impact from that 1987 minimum wage initiative, you can be sure that the bullshit artists at the Washington Policy Center would be flinging it.

Finally, even if a $15 minimum wage with no tip credit might influence some diners to chintz on their tips (because you begrudge the server bringing you your $40 entree a $5/hour raise, or something), consumers would have to have this information in order to act on it. But most diners are low-information consumers, as well as creatures of habit. Ms. Anonymous acknowledges our “awesome” tip culture, despite the fact that Washington is one of only seven states without a tip credit. Do most diners understand that?

I do, and yet I tip the same percentage back East in Pennsylvania and New Jersey that I do here in Seattle, because habit! Except for one big difference: Back East, I almost never drop money in the tip jar for take out coffee or food, because I know the servers won’t get it! For example, New Jersey’s tip credit is an abusive $6.12 an hour. No Starbucks barista in New Jersey is making anything close to that in tips. So every dollar you stuff in a tip credit state’s tip jar is going straight toward lowering Starbucks’ labor costs.

Of course, Seattle baristas do better. We don’t currently have a tip credit. And yet according to a survey conducted by the coffee blog Sprudge, our tipping culture here is especially strong:

I was a little surprised that Seattle made only one appearance in the top 10 list for tips with $9.28/hr, despite tips in Seattle making up the highest average percent of income of any city at 35%. In my experience, the high-end of tips in Seattle may not be great, but tipping is obviously a cultural value: Seattle was #3 for average tips at $5.85/hr.

FYI, that $5.85 an hour average is almost exactly what our tip credit would be. You might as well just dump that tip jar directly into the employer’s pockets.

And that’s why if we pass a tip credit here in Seattle, I’ll stop tipping baristas here too. Because I’m not stupid.

I guess this is the sort of navel gazing that passes for news these days around the offices of the Seattle Times editorial board:

With the retirement of state Supreme Court Justice Jim Johnson for health reasons, Gov. Jay Inslee will have the opportunity to appoint a justice to the nine-member panel. The Spokesman-Review and the Yakima Herald-Republic have joined The Seattle Times in encouraging the governor to look East of the Cascades for his choice.

Omigod, omigod! The editorial boards of two Eastern Washington newspapers have urged Governor Inslee to appoint a supreme court justice from Eastern Washington! It’s snowing in Hell! Or something!

(Yawn.)

As I’ve previously written, I don’t really care from what part of the state Justice Johnson’s replacement hails, as long as he or she is the best qualified jurist available. That should be Inslee’s primary concern. Though I’ve no problem with diversity—geographic or otherwise—being used as a tie-breaker.

That said, let’s be clear that Governor Inslee has absolutely nothing political to gain from appointing a justice from the other side of the mountains. Either way, he will not receive a single Eastern Washington daily newspaper editorial board endorsement in 2016, regardless of his Republican opponent. Nor would such an appointment earn him any additional Eastern Washington votes.

Elections have consequences. Had Republican Rob McKenna won the governor’s mansion, you can damn well believe that he would have treated Democratic constituencies like crap. So there’s no real reason to reward Eastern Washington voters with any special favors beyond the billions in tax subsidies we already ship their way.

– I’m cautiously optimistic about the Seattle Bike Master Plan

– How Portland can reduce the wage gap between women and men

Often there’s really not any more time on the “day off” for creative work than during the rest of the week. Everything else that got put off during the week rushing in to fill that gap left by the day job. [h/t]

– If you’ve had your bike stolen in Marysville, go look for it.

– Today in conservative victimhood

– Now where will I possibly be able to find deep fried seafood in Ballard? (I like Ivar’s, but I don’t think I’ve ever been to the Ballard location).