This basic motivation is what let Harvard economist Robert Stavins — a supporter of AB 32 — to warn six years ago of the folly of AB 32 supporters depicting it as a job-creation program with almost no downside. If requiring California’s businesses to switch to cleaner but costlier energy would help their bottom line, of course they’d be for it, Stavins noted.

He’s not just another mouthy academic. He’s arguably the world’s leading environmental economist.

Minimum-wage hike? It’s all good!

Now, on the minimum wage, we are seeing the exact same phenomenon from the California left. Instead of essays that say raising the minimum wage is overall a good thing — even though it will hurt some companies and some niche fields by making them less competitive with rival companies that don’t have the same pay edicts — we’re seeing argument after argument that raising the minimum wage is a no-brainer with no downside. Take it away, San Francisco Chronicle:

Raising the minimum wage — at least in Oakland — would have widespread positive impacts, economic and otherwise, and almost no downside, according to a UC Berkeley report scheduled to be released Friday.

The findings generally hold true for other Bay Area cities considering minimum wage hikes, including San Francisco, Berkeley, Richmond and Concord, researchers said.

“Raising the minimum wage puts more money in the pockets of consumers, and they’ll tend to spend it locally, which is good for the local economy,” said Ken Jacobs, chair of the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education, which conducted the study. “What you don’t see with minimum wage increases is a negative impact on employment or the economy.”

In Oakland, raising the minimum hourly wage to $12.25 — a measure expected to appear on the Nov. 4 ballot — would boost the paychecks of up to 48,000 people by at least $115 million, according to the study.

That translates to fewer people dependent on taxpayer-subsidized social programs, lower worker turnover, higher worker performance and more money spent at local businesses, Jacobs said.

No media push-back against extreme claims

I know all sides of the political spectrum argue fervently for causes whether or not they have the facts on their side. But it really does seem to me in the Obama era that the left is pushing this tactic to an extreme, and that the media don’t respond with the vigor they should.

Remember, Stavins is one of the most respected economists in the world. His Occam’s razor, cut-to-the-chase point about the folly of asserting that regulations help business has never appeared in any California news story about AB 32 of which I’m aware. Instead, it has appeared on The Wall Street Journal’s opinion page and in what I’ve written for the Union-Tribune, Cal Watchdog and other outlets.

Why? I don’t know. But the idea that it’s 2014 and the claim from a “labor center” that regulation boosts the economy goes unchallenged in major newspapers like the S.F. Chronicle is pretty stunning.

And depressing.

But two years later, however, Schwarzenegger — in full legacy-hunt mode — didn’t say squat when the California Air Resources Board released a “scoping” plan of the economic impact of AB 32 that was full of happy talk that depicted the law as akin to a job-creation program.

Professional economists pushed back. The “peer review” of the findings was harsh. The panel included Harvard’s Robert Stavins — perhaps the world’s leading environmental economist. Stavins backed AB 32 but considered its happy talk ridiculous. “I have come to the inescapable conclusion that the economic analysis is terribly deficient in critical ways and should not be used by the state government or the public for the purpose of assessing the likely costs of CARB’s plan,” he wrote.

Stavins later told The Wall Street Journal that if shifting to cleaner-but-costlier energy were good for businesses, they would have already done it.

That’s such a crisp, simple Occam’s Razor way to frame this issue.

Unfortunately, in the California of 2014, when it comes to economics, we’re in a post-common sense era.

‘Skimp’ on wages? You’ll make less money!

This is playing out in San Diego, where the City Council’s liberal supermajority wants to make a big splash before November elections in which they are likely to lose their power to impose legislation over a veto by Republican Mayor Kevin Faulconer.

The main way they want to make this splash is by sharply increasing the minimum wage in the city. The initial proposal was to make it $13.09 cents an hour by July 2017. That would be nearly one-third higher than the $10 that will be the minimum state rate effective 2016.

Business interests point out that this will hurt San Diego on competitiveness grounds. Advocates initially responded by saying job losses from a minimum wage hike would be minimal. But somewhere along the way, the spirit of the loony air board infected their thinking, and now San Diegans are being told that a minimum-wage hike is, yes, a rising tide that will lift all boats.

Consider this nugget from this op-ed defending the City Council’s plan. The gist is that business operators who try to keep costs down are idiots who don’t know what they’re doing:

“Employers who skimp on wages and benefits don’t make more money, they make less. They have greater turnover, resulting in more training, and they engender less loyalty and more cheating.”

Oh, give me a break.

CA activists lecture business on how to make money

According to this one-size-fits-all theory, Wal-Mart and carwashes and taco stands and all the non-union companies in the world that try to keep wages down are simply buffoons who are lucky to still be in business.

The arrogance of this is stunning.

The truth, of course, is that — as the world’s leading environmental economist told The Wall Street Journal — businesses won’t reject strategies that make them money. They will embrace such strategies.

But as I said, we’re in a post-common sense era in which activists and liberal pundits who have never made a payroll or run a business look at successful businesses and say something akin to the following:

Hey, you idiots, you don’t know what you’re doing.

Surreal. And so California-ish.

By Chris Reed

In the Bush 43 era, some pundits on the left took to decrying the media practice of treating quotes from the White House with the same respect as quotes from its critics. They said this “false equivalence” allowed alleged Bush lies about Iraq, Afghanistan, etc., to circulate without proper skepticism.

What about how the California media deal with AB 32? The fact is the peer group of environmental economists hired years ago to review AB 32’s “scoping plan” for the most part scorned its claim that forcing a switch to cleaner-but-costlier energy would have little or no effect on the economy. The leading critic was Harvard’s Robert Stavins, arguably the world’s leading environmental economist.

But in the Golden State, we still see stories like this morning’s garbage from David R. Baker of the San Francisco Chronicle, with the same old false equivalance.

“Studies of the cap-and-trade system’s potential impact tend to reflect the views of those who commissioned them.”

As I wrote last month, The New York Times knows the truth about AB 32: namely, that it is a huge risk.

But the N.Y. Times also wrote this:

“Opponents and supporters alike worry that the program could hurt the state’s fragile economy by driving out refineries, cement makers, glass factories and other businesses.”

No they don’t. Instead, David R. Baker and dozens of other reporters around this state somehow can’t grasp the idea that forcing California business to spend more for energy that other rival states and nations hurts California’s competitiveness in the most fundamental way.

Duh. At least they are consistent. They’ve been doing this for years.