There’s a difference in a reporter asking probing questions or playing Devil’s advocate to get to the truth about something as opposed to just arguing on behalf of an ideology. But ideology is about all it appears CNN News host Carol Costello has as she argues with economist Stephen Moore from the Heritage Foundation about the CBO report that predicts hundreds of thousands of job losses if we raise the minimum wage to over $10/hour.
I was okay with Costello until about the 2 min mark when she suggested that, based on the CBO report, it’s not certain that any jobs will be lost. She’s using the CBO’s prediction range that says it could be anywhere from slim job loss to 1 million jobs lost. So being an liberal ideologue she automatically goes with ‘slim job losses’ as the most likely outcome, but Moore counters that the median estimate by the CBO is 500k jobs lost.
After they tussle a little longer over the CBO report, Costello finally asks Moore how he’d reduce poverty (as opposed to raising minimum wage). He suggests dumping Obamacare and cutting taxes on business so they could hire more people. But Costello quickly responds
“Oh c’mon Stephen, businesses are not hurting, banks are not hurting. They just aren’t hiring because, you know what, they don’t have to.”
Moore agrees that businesses are sitting on a lot of capital, but says they aren’t reinvesting it into the economy because they fear the next big hit to come out of Washington.
They continue to tussle over the report and Costello finally ends it by still disagreeing that jobs will be lost if we raise the minimum wage. I guess all her years as a business owner and senior economist lead her to that conclusion. Ugh.
Watch the full interview below: