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Tucker Carslon Show – May 29, 2017
Interview w/ Mike Rowe, ie: $15/hr.
Minimum wage issue
Carlson – Well, two days ago,
protesters amassed outside a McDonald's Shareholders' meeting in Chicago.
They demanded the company started paying their roughly 850,000
workers in the U.S. a $15.00 minimum wage. Do the protesters really
want to get their wish? What would happen if they did? Working at
McDonald's is not that complicated. So would a $15.00 wage drive
further automation and lead to mass layoffs?
No one really knows, but that's a
concern and we brought it up with “Dirty Jobs” host Mike Rowe.
Here was his view.
Mike Rowe, thanks for joining us.
Rowe – I wouldn't miss it.
Carlson – So protesters are gathered
outside McDonald's across the country demanding higher wages.
Rowe – Huh!
Carlson – And so, on the one hand,
I'm always sympathetic to people who want to get paid more,
especially for jobs that are hard and long. On the other hand, at
what point does McDonald's decide we're replacing you with
automation, with robots?
Rowe – Probably this point... or
probably soon. I don't have a crystal ball. I mean, but everybody
I've talked to is going back again and again, to the uh, well, they
call it the threat of automation. I mean the headlines that I'm
seeing are how computers are going to “steal” our jobs. And, I
don't know if it really makes sense to anthropomorphize it, like, I
don't think computers are going around, like, twirling their mustache
and laughing maniacally. It's gonna happen. It's gonna happen as
surely as the Internet messed up the TV, and the TV messed up cinema,
and cinema disrupted radio, and radio messed up the newspapers, and
Kindle screwed up the booksellers. And so it goes. But, I don't think
it's anything to panic over. I think it's going to happen, but as it
relates to the minimum wage conversation, and as it relates to labor
and management, the only thing I can add to it is, with my foundation
we try and remind people that learning a skill that's actually in
demand, negates the whole conversation. If you can weld, if you
can... if you're a plumber, if you're an electrician, if you're
willing to learn a skill that has a pre-existing demand, then you
don't have to constantly negotiate and talk about a few extra dollars
in order to stay in a position. But frankly, I don't know how advance
in that kind of thinking. [Just demanding a raise because the cost of
living is constantly going up.] So our philosophy is pretty simple.
Um... if you have a skill and that skill is in demand you can work
where you want, and you can write your own ticket. If you don't,
you're gonna have to hope the next negotiation works out and the next
minimum wage position falls favorably in your direction; which
strikes me as fatalistic.
Carlson – That's such a common sense
point, and you...
Rowe – No, I can't help it, I
can't...
Carlson – No, but it makes an
inherent and unassailable sense. So, why aren't our schools teaching
some percentage of our kids to do the same thing?
Rowe – As we've discussed before, I
think we've got it in our heads that there's a category of good jobs
and bad jobs, that there's a category of good education and bad
education – we don't call it that, we call it “higher education”
and “alternative education” - but look, it's fun with the
language, right? But the minute you categorize an entire vertical of
education as alternative, you might as well call it subordinate. So
the message starts early on. If you go to a trade school, you're
going to have to settle for a “second class” job, or some kind of
consolation prize. And so parents don't want that for their kids,
guidance counselors don't want that for their schools. So, all of
these opportunities that today constitute 5.6 million available jobs
– open jobs – that are sitting there – they don't get any
press, the don't get any love because somewhere back in the reptilian
part of our brain we believe they're sub-standard. That's dumb...
Carlson – But they pay well. What I'm
confused by is so many of our young people end up in what they're
calling the “sharing economy”, where a few billionaires in
Silicon Valley exploit them for nothing, to rent their apartment out
of a B&B, drive your car for Uber, these are jobs that pay many
times that, right? Or am I missing it?
Rowe – Well, look it's hard, it's
tempting to take a cookie cutter approach to everything and put...
what's a news anchor get? Do you work in Des Moines? Well, same thing
with welding. You know, if you've got your certificate to weld and
you're in Oklahoma you might start at $45,000 a year. A year later,
you might be in say, western North Dakota making $120,000, or in the Gulf
Coast doing better than that. The skill goes where you go, and this
is another thing schools don't teach. If you have a skill that's in
demand, it's innate in you wherever...
Carlson – It's portable.
Rowe – Yeah! I mean, it's inherently
mobile. It's not... you don't have to go to the McDonald's – with
respect, right? I mean, you don't have to go to the retailer and
stand behind the counter and wait for the business to come, you
can... No one talks about the path that small businesses that trades
represent, there's no talk about it, but, on my old show I can't tell
you how many people I ran into who had a small business, who had
employees, who had multiple trucks, but started with a skill. So, my
thing with the minimum wage and with automation and all of it is that
anything we do that knocks the bottom rungs off of the ladder that we
all must surely climb is self-defeating. So, if getting to
$15.00/hour hastens automation and therefore eliminates thousands of
opportunities for kids – who by the way are not just learning how
to flip a burger, but to tuck in their shirt and show up at work on
time – all this basic stuff, I mean how else do you learn that
stuff except by being in your first or second job? We're going to
arbitrage logic right out of the equation, and then, R2D2, take a
bow.
Carlson – (Laughs)
Rowe – (Smiling says) That's not bad!
Carlson – Good, that's very good. By
the way, you're not reading anything, I can assure our viewers. That
was... (snapping his fingers).
Rowe – No, I can't read, tragically.
(Smiling again.)
Carlson – (Laughing again)
Rowe – I mean, this is something we
should talk about in the future.
Carslon – Yes, literacy. Mike Rowe,
it's always nice to see you.
Rowe – Likewise.
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