Posted on 08/04/2014 11:25:43 AM PDT by shepardspie33
What better way to help out the less fortunate than to raise the minimum standard of wage that an employee is paid? The idea is simple and the public supports it.
However, the poor are the ones most negatively affected by minimum wage laws through multiple channels such as employment and consumer prices of everyday goods. As Nobel laureate and economics titan Milton Friedman observed, "The real tragedy of minimum wage laws is that they are supported by well-meaning groups who want to reduce poverty. But the people who are hurt most by higher minimums are the most poverty stricken."
Of course everyone does not see it that way. A July 29 article in the NY Times opened with these words:
“The standard argument against a higher minimum wage is that it will lead to job loss as employers, unable to pay more, lay off current workers or don’t hire new ones.
It’s important to state up front that research and experience don’t bear that out. The minimum wage has been raised many times without hurting employment.”
The former words from the trusted Times fail to square with reality. Although there have been instances when the minimum wage has been raised without decreasing employment, the overwhelming majority of the time it raises unemployment as well as causing other negative effects.
In their exhaustive studies of minimum wage law David Neumark of the University of California and William Wascher of the Federal Reserve Board highlight the ill effects of minimum wage policy. Through empirical analysis of over 100 studies published since 1990, it was found that minimum wage laws show an overall trend to decrease employment of young and unskilled workers, the exact demographic targeted by lawmakers in drafting such laws. Over two-thirds of the studies examined showed negative employment effects...
(Excerpt) Read more at reddirtreport.com ...
If raising the minimum wage is such a good idea, why don’t they raise it to $50/hr?
Yeah, but it would hurt businesses and entrepreneurs. And that’s the point. Has nothing to do with love and compassion but envy, jealousy, resentment, hate and covetousness.
It is a baseline for union wages. Helping the poor is cover for the true agenda, helping the unions.
In a sane and rational world, minimum wage would be $0.00 per hour.
If a person is being paid compensation in excess of the value he or she is providing to the employer, that is not “wages”, that is charity. While the employer may be very altruistic, and would cheerfully pay that additional stipend to some underperforming person on the payroll, it does subtract from the bottom line on which the enterprise derives all its funding. And if ANY enterprise is receiving less money than it is disbursing on a long-term basis, the enterprise will eventually close its doors.
Agree. Every time they try to raise, we should try to repeal.
Will never happen though because the unions will fight it tooth and nail.
Do I wish to order a ten dollar Big Mac, made by the same basement living dunderhead, that did it for five dollars an hour?
No way!
Don’t be so stingy. We need to make it $100,000 an hour. That way we could all be rich. What could possible go wrong?
Honestly taunting the Democrats like that would make it affordable to hold a job and thus force all employees into 2ndary markets ether evading the wage law or excluded from it such as commission.
Thus in practice shifting the economy off waged labor permanently and to a more competitive commission based labor.
A lot of people would lose their job and the effects would nonetheless be devastating but if Democrats do it, they get the blame.
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