For the first time in a decade, the House approved an increase in the federal minimum wage – to $15 an hour, including for tipped workers.
A minimum wage hike has been a top Democratic campaign promise, intended to address income inequality that’s driving the 2020 political debate. Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland said raising the wage is the “right thing to do.”
Some 30 million workers would see bigger paychecks, according to a budget report.
https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1151886852141588481?s=20
(AP)
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5 Responses
Aha. So less people with jobs, but at least the people who don’t get fired will earn more. The others will be homeless. Yay, well done dumbocrats.
These measures are pushed as if they are win-win. That’s not the case.
There are businesses that thrive on unskilled labor, and their hires are paid according to their budget. The result of this is that the staff will be downsized. So some workers will see their pay increased while others will lose their employment completely. Finding new jobs without a skill set to sell the worker is difficult.
There are also many thousands of cash jobs, such as cleaning ladies, etc., that will not be able to demand the $15 without going on the books, and watching withholdings strip them of whatever they would have gained. It was better to let states or localities pass such legislation, as they can be better (likely far from accurate) in assessing the liabilities of such a law for their constituents.
Meanwhile, this is a typical DemocRat move. Do something that sounds nice, without regard for the reality. I wish them a speedy exit from politics.
It’s really another way of describing “imposed inflation” because if the wage for employees increases so must the prices for goods in order to offset the cost of operating the business. Wholesalers must raise, trucking must raise its prices and the retailer must raise his prices. So who gained?
As there is not a national job market, there shoujld not be a national minimum wage. If you set the minimum wage based on what unskilled manual laborers get in Manhattan or San Francisco, it is ridiculously too high in rural areas or even small cities. If you base the minimum wage on what the free market would pay workers in rural areas, it is so low tha no one would work for that wage in the big cities. As it is, there is indication that the major impact of raising the minimum wage is to encourage employers to fire workers and replace them with robots, or to outsource jobs overseas.
The federal government has decided, by setting a minimum wage, to help unskilled workers get closer to a living wage. Sound research by real economists has shown that the increases in the minimum wage do not – do not – substantially diminish employment. This is contrary to lots of theories (and bubbameintzers), but theories are not true if they have not been tested against the facts. That’s what real economist do, and they have found that minimum wage laws do not substantially diminish employment.