Vieira Buys Gas 'Crisis' Hype; Befuddled by Basic Economics Outlined by Stossel

Incoming NBC Today show co-host Meredith Vieira, on Friday's ABC daytime show The View, showcased her susceptibility to baseless media hype and her own economic ignorance. Interviewing ABC's John Stossel, on to plug his new book, Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity: Get Out the Shovel -- Why Everything You Know is Wrong, and a Friday night 20/20 about it, Vieira demanded: "You say there is no gas 'crisis.' How can you say that?" Stossel explained it's plentiful and half the price as in Europe, but Vieira remained unswayed, ridiculously insisting: "But it's still a crisis, I mean in the sense that gas prices are going up. That's a crisis for us." A few minutes later, a befuddled Vieira exposed not only a lack of basic economic knowledge, but also unfamiliarity with a common conservative argument: "Why does raising the minimum wage, this is one I don't get, actually hurt poor people? I don't understand that one at all." (Partial transcript follows)

Stossel's two exchanges with Vieira on the May 12 The View. In between, the other hosts taked a bit with Stossel:

Vieira: “You say there is no gas 'crisis.' How can you say that?”

Stossel: “A crisis means that you can't get it, but it's half the price it is in Europe. And the idea that we're running out of oil is just nonsense. There's enough in the tar sands of Canada to fuel America for a hundred years. It's just a matter of price. At fifty bucks a barrel, we have it from Canada.”

Vieira: “But it's still a crisis, I mean in the sense that gas prices are going up. That's a crisis for us.”

Stossel: “It's a crisis for some people. It's still cheaper than it was in the 80s or the 20s -- all these people saying 'it's a record!' It's just because they don't adjust for inflation. You might as well say the movie Rush Hour 3 was one of the highest-grossing movies of all-time.”

And a couple of minutes later:

Vieira: “Why does raising the minimum wage, this is one I don't get, actually hurt poor people? I don't understand that one at all.”

Stossel: “We all want poor people to make more. But to think that raising the minimum wage to do that assumes that every employer has a fixed number of workers. But the truth is that people on the margins lose jobs when minimum wages go up. We used to have people washing windshields at gas stations. We don't anymore because of the minimum wage. There's no opportunity for kids, for entry-level workers. The jobs go to skilled workers then.”

Joy Behar: “But did you ever work for minimum wage? It's hard.”

Stossel: “It sucks. But it's an opportunity. It's the bottom rung of a ladder that goes up if we allow it too.”

Stossel's ABC page. An excerpt from his book. Amazon's page for his book.