Free Republic

...Romney’s embrace of insuring the minimum wage increases, currently at $7.25, was surprising for a candidate who insists he is a reliable conservative. It was major mistake on his part for three reasons. First, from an ideological standpoint, what was he thinking? Has he missed the decades long discussion among conservatives about the disastrous impact of the minimum wage? It has eliminated jobs – hundreds of thousands of them – for young persons on the low rungs of employment. The ill effects have been felt especially by African American youth. Not only that, but the minimum wage represents a government...

Governor Mitt Romney's statement about not worrying about the poor has been treated as a gaffe in much of the media, and those in the Republican establishment who have been rushing toward endorsing his coronation as the GOP's nominee for president — with 90 percent of the delegates still not yet chosen — have been trying to sweep his statement under the rug. But Romney's statement about not worrying about the poor — because they "have a very ample safety net" — was followed by a statement that was not just a slip of the tongue, and should be...

If I had a nickel for every time I had to go toe to toe with a liberal over the minimum wage, or came across literature petitioning my representatives to raise it, I'd almost be able to balance the budget.The late great economist Milton Friedman has said it, Thomas Sowell and Walter E. Williams has said it: The minimum wage destroys jobs and slows the economy. And now El Rushbo is saying it. Because it's true. Everything you need to know about the minimum wage is right here in these 13 minutes. School is open and the professor is in.Some gems to listen...

Does increasing the minimum wage increase GDP? Bloggingstocks' Joseph Lazaro outlined the theory that it might back on 1 August 2009, shortly after the U.S. federal minimum wage reached its current level of $7.25 per hour (emphasis ours): ... the U.S. Federal Reserve will be monitoring prices and costs to see if the higher minimum wage is creating inflation havoc at a time when U.S. businesses least need another concern to deal with. Businesses have enough to worry about; and some are struggling just to maintain operations for another quarter or two -- the recession has been that damaging. But...

Mitt Romney said Wednesday that he supported tying the federal minimum wage to inflation, a move that would result in automatic increases to the pay rate. The position is a break from fiscal conservative orthodoxy — which generally seeks to eliminate the minimum wage — but could help Romney rebound from damaging comments he made earlier Wednesday when discussing the "very poor" in America. "I haven't changed my thoughts on that," Romney told reporters aboard his campaign plane on Wednesday, according to The Associated Press. He was apparently referring to a statement he made in 2002 when running for governor...

Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney renewed his support Wednesday for automatic increases in the federal minimum wage to keep pace with inflation, a position sharply at odds with traditional GOP business allies, conservatives and the party's senior lawmakers.

EAGAN, Minn. (AP) — Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney renewed his support Wednesday for automatic increases in the federal minimum wage to keep pace with inflation, a position sharply at odds with traditional GOP business allies, conservatives and the party's senior lawmakers. "I haven't changed my thoughts on that," the former Massachusetts governor told reporters aboard his chartered campaign plane, referring to a stand he has held for a decade. He did not say if he would ask Congress to approve the change if he wins the White House this fall. Congress first enacted federal minimum wage legislation in 1938...

You undoubtedly know that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a progressive Christian and champion of civil rights and the social gospel. You may also know that he spoke out against the Vietnam War, harshly criticized U.S. foreign policy, and questioned the capitalist system that produced poverty. But do you know his theology? Right up until Dr. King's assassination in Memphis, Tennessee, where he had traveled to support striking sanitation workers, the civil rights leader worked—not as a secular activist but as a Baptist minister—to awaken the conscience of the nation. What was the meaning of Jesus for Dr. King?...

Many people in America believe that wages of employees are as low as they are merely because of “corporate greed” and that companies want to take advantage of their employees. However, most people that think rationally and for themselves don’t believe this. If the leaders of America would let free markets work, companies and corporations would have to offer competitive pay for their workers to beat out competition. Government regulations and minimum wage laws are the reason why unemployment is so high in America, these problems don’t occur because people on Wall Street are greedy. The first and most important...

President Obama issued a directive today granting home health care workers the same protections of minimum wage and overtime that other workers get. Noting that home health care workers were classified in the same category as babysitters and therefore exempt from most labor rules, the president noted that many of these employees required government assistance just to make ends meet. "This means that many homecare workers are forced to rely

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- David Frias works two minimum-wage jobs to squeak by in one of the most expensive cities in America. Come New Year's Day, he'll have a few more coins in his pocket as San Francisco makes history by becoming the first city in the nation to scale a $10 minimum wage. The city's hourly wage for its lowest-paid workers will hit $10.24, more than $2 above the California minimum wage and nearly $3 more than the working wage set by the federal government. It won't put much more in Frias' wallet. But it gives him a sense...

Imagine what would happen if America barged its way into a developing country, buttered up its homicidal dictator and agreed a back-of-the-envelope deal in which he signed over his nation’s mineral wealth in return for roads, railways and sports stadiums. Everyone would benefit, no? No. The problem is that the infrastructure turns out to be worth a hell of a lot less than the minerals. Fortunately, Washington has had the foresight to top up the dictator’s Swiss bank account. Problem solved! As for the mining operation, the Americans really don’t want to be bothered by minimum wages or trade unions....

Skinning, gutting, and cutting up catfish is not easy or pleasant work. No one knows this better than Randy Rhodes, president of Harvest Select, which has a processing plant in impoverished Uniontown, Ala. For years, Rhodes has had trouble finding Americans willing to grab a knife and stand 10 or more hours a day in a cold, wet room for minimum wage and skimpy benefits. Most of his employees are Guatemalan. Or they were, until Alabama enacted an immigration law in September that requires police to question people they suspect might be in the U.S. illegally and punish businesses -

Chancellor Angela Merkel is looking to introduce a “market-based organised lower limit for wages” of at least €6.90 an hour—although her party has always been against a minimum wage. … The CDU said the level should be set by a commission of social partners – employers and trades unions – and that it should be oriented on the agreed wage for temporary work. This is currently €6.89 per hour in the east of the country and €7.79 in the west. The CDU is calling for a unitary hourly wage to be agreed for those workers who are not covered by...

Ninety-nine percent of Americans, the folks the youthful Wall Street Occupiers claim to represent, have been trying their best to ignore the Occupiers. But far from wishing they would go away, we encourage the Occupiers to keep protesting "corporate greed," "social injustice," "income inequality," crony capitalism and government corruption, and issuing their threats of violent insurrection and anarchy in the name of democracy. No, Americans need to take a long, hard look at these protesters because they — "the OccupyWallSt.org collective" — are the face of America's Loopy Left. If their words and causes aren't evidence enough, consider their supporters...

Michele Bachmann has drawn some media flack about her views on the minimum wage. She has said that the minimum wage is a bad idea and that getting rid of it would bolster employment. Despite a considerable body of academic literature and a whole lot of common sense that supports Bachmann’s view, some reporters seem to have a hard time with it. A Washington Post columnist blogged about a recent exchange between Bachmann and a morning talk show host on this subject with the headline: “Michele Bachmann’s radical position on minimum wage.” Here we sit today with over 9 percent...

Academic economists find that they can make whatever prognostications they like since they don’t have to live with the results. “Official motto of the White House economic team: Those who can, do. Those who can’t, fantasize in the classroom, fail in Washington and then return to the Ivy Tower to train the next generation of egghead economic saboteurs,” columnist Michelle Malkin notes. “Life is good for left-wing academics.” “Everyone else pays dearly.” For the past two decades, economists in the Ivory Tower have been trying to overturn decades of research that shows that raising the minimum wage leads to an...

A Wikileaks post published on The Nation shows that the Obama Administration fought to keep Haitian wages at 31 cents an hour. (This article was taken down by The Nation due to an embargo, but it was excerpted at Columbia Journalism Review.) It started when Haiti passed a law two years ago raising its minimum wage to 61 cents an hour. According to an embassy cable: This infuriated American corporations like Hanes and Levi Strauss that pay Haitians slave wages to sew their clothes. They said they would only fork over a seven-cent-an-hour increase, and they got the State Department...

As if more proof were needed about the minimum wage's devastating effects, yet another study has reached the same conclusion. Last week, two labor economists, Professors William Even (Miami University of Ohio) and David Macpherson (Trinity University), released a study for the Washington, D.C.-based Employment Policies Institute titled "Unequal Harm: Racial Disparities in the Employment Consequences of Minimum Wage Increases." During the peak of what has been dubbed the Great Recession, the unemployment rate for young adults (16 to 24 years of age) as a whole rose to above 27%. The unemployment rate for black young adults was almost 50%,...

Walter Williams fans are in for a treat— and people who are not Walter Williams fans are in for a shock— when they read his latest book, "Race and Economics." It is a demolition derby on paper, as Professor Williams destroys one after another of the popular fallacies about the role of race in the American economy. I can still vividly recall the response to one of Walter's earliest writings, back in the 1970s, when he and I were working on the same research project in Washington. Walter wrote a brief article that destroyed the central theme of one...

Most people say that a job is good for making money. So, if you don't need money, what's the point? The fabled English aristocratic class of the late 19th and early 20th century apparently thought that way, if the caricatures painted by Jeeves and Wooster, Brideshead, and the like have any truth to them. Their main job was getting dressed and undressed. It seems like young Americans are thinking the same way. Doug French drew my attention to some statistics from the Wall Street Journal on teenage employment that knocked me out. In 2000, slightly more than a third of...

The minimum wage debate is an old favorite. Another very visible and clear line of disagreement between conservatives and liberals. There are those on one side that feel we should increase the minimum wage to a level that better represents a living wage. Other, myself included, feel that wages are best left to the negotiations of the employer and the employee. There are all kinds of debates raging about that people arenÂ’t able to afford to raise a family on the minimum wage. Heck, it can be legitimately argued that you canÂ’t raise YOURSELF on minimum wage. Be that as...

Vanity: FReeper research help needed. I am trying to find an article or thread that I think I read during the run up to a recent increase in the minimum wage. I thought there was an article that reported that as a result of the increase in the minimum wage, a sneaker company was going to move its assembly plant from Guam or the Marshall Islands to the Far East. My take away was that the local folks, who were getting by on the current lower rate, but were working, were going to be put out of work as a...

The European Commission reported the monthly minimum wages for European countries for 2011, and we calculated how the U.S. compares to European salaries. Turns out we are nestled right between Greece and Spain.

Nevada’s higher education levels are holding the region back from diversifying its economy and the city has become a modern-day version of Pittsburgh or Detroit, which once relied on one sector for its growth to its detriment, the director of a UNLV-based think tank said today. Robert Lang, the director of Brookings Mountain West, outlined the problems Nevada faces as he kicked off a day-long conference at UNLV on how to diversify the economy. Lang said the state has touted itself for its favorable business climate but said that’s meaningless without having a skilled and educated workforce that makes companies...

PORTLAND, Ore. – On Jan. 1 the minimum wage throughout Oregon state goes up by a dime, to $8.50 an hour. This cements Oregon and Washington's positions as the two highest-paid states for minimum-wage workers in the U.S. Washington comes in first, at $8.55. Except for the past two years, Washington state's rate has risen steadily since voters passed Initiative 688 in 1998, which matched wage increases to inflation. Oregon comes in second. Federal minimum wage is $7.25. ...

In 2007, both of Michigan's senators and seven of the House of Representative members currently serving voted to raise the federal minimum wage. However, all nine of these elected officials offer unpaid internships for their congressional offices. This information comes on the heels of an Obama administration announcement this past spring that the Department of Labor would begin cracking down on unpaid internships offered by private businesses. The department seeks to eliminate unpaid internships for nearly all for-profit companies. Some believe this is a sign of hypocrisy by these members of congress and that there is value in unpaid internships....

In 2007, both of Michigan's senators and seven of the House of Representative members currently serving voted to raise the federal minimum wage. However, all nine of these elected officials offer unpaid internships for their congressional offices. This information comes on the heels of an Obama administration announcement this past spring that the Department of Labor would begin cracking down on unpaid internships offered by private businesses. The department seeks to eliminate unpaid internships for nearly all for-profit companies. Some believe this is a sign of hypocrisy by these members of congress and that there is value in unpaid internships....

In 2007, both of Michigan's senators and seven of the House of Representative members currently serving voted to raise the federal minimum wage. However, all nine of these elected officials offer unpaid internships for their congressional offices. This information comes on the heels of an Obama administration announcement this past spring that the Department of Labor would begin cracking down on unpaid internships offered by private businesses. The department seeks to eliminate unpaid internships for nearly all for-profit companies. Some believe this is a sign of hypocrisy by these members of congress and that there is value in unpaid internships....

The easiest way to discuss the inherent flaw in raising the minimum wage is to consider the hamburger shop that can afford to pay $30 in salary, total, for one hour of operation. At $5 per hour, the owner can hire six employees. If he must pay $6/hour, he can only employ five, and make them work faster. If he is forced to pay $10/hour, he must seriously overwork just three employees. Eventually, service will suffer, and the shop will go out of business, putting them all out of work. We cannot know, from the outside, how many employees are...

NEWCASTLE, South Africa — The sheriff arrived at the factory here to shut it down, part of a national enforcement drive against clothing manufacturers who violate the minimum wage. But women working on the factory floor — the supposed beneficiaries of the crackdown — clambered atop cutting tables and ironing boards to raise anguished cries against it. “Why? Why?” shouted Nokuthula Masango, 25, after the authorities carted away bolts of gaily colored fabric. She made just $36 a week, $21 less than the minimum wage, but needed the meager pay to help support a large extended family that includes her...

Economics 101: Minimum Wage and Living Wage Being the kind compassionate souls we Americans are, we often get tricked into believing things because we want them to be true. Wages, jobs, and poverty are often passionately debated and exceptionally prone to hopeful misinformation and logical fallacies. Minimum wage and the idea of a “living wage” are examples of just that. They sound good and helpful but in practice they do more bad than good. They displace jobs and discourage hiring, cause increases in price levels, and they don't help the majority actually raise their quality of life. If this all...

Several factors have aligned to hurt what was once a vibrant and reliable labor market, experts say. In some cases, unemployed older Americans or illegal immigrants have taken the jobs, while an increase in the minimum wage has made it too expensive for some employers to hire teens. Small says that among a group of 25 friends, only one has found consistent work for the summer... In construction and landscaping, illegal immigrants have pushed teens out of jobs, “It’s too expensive for us to hire teens that don’t have experience,” said Karin Devencenzi... also blames the minimum wage. At $8.40...

Attorneys for the Schwarzenegger administration on Tuesday filed a brief in Sacramento Superior Court that argues state employee unions shouldn't be allowed to enter the minimum wage fight between the governor and State Controller John Chiang. As reported here, California Association of Professional Scientists and Professional Engineers in California Government on Monday filed a motion to be a party in the minimum wage litigation flying back and forth the last week or so. SEIU Local 1000 and CCPOA have done the same. All the unions are siding with Chiang. A hearing is set for Friday at 11 a.m. The administration's...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — As the Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger was the technology of the future, feared by humans. As governor, he's being foiled by the technology of the past. For the second time in two years, Schwarzenegger has ordered most state workers' pay cut to the federal minimum wage because lawmakers missed their deadline to fix the state's $19 billion budget deficit. The Legislature's failure to act has left the state without a spending plan as the new fiscal year begins. A state appellate court ruled in Schwarzenegger's favor Friday, but the state controller, who issues state paychecks, says he can't...

A delegation of 20 black mayors representing the National Conference of Black Mayors arrived in Washington, DC to lobby congress to pass legislation to promote “clean energy.” According to the delegation’s press release, they want “a national plan to move their cities to become more energy efficient, reduce pollution and create new clean energy jobs and businesses.” But is black unemployment twice the national unemployment rate because of carbon emissions? Are the budgets of state and local governments running in the red because of the kind of energy Americans burn? One visit that the delegation of black mayors did not...

The 3rd District Court of Appeal has upheld a two-year-old ruling allowing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to reduce state workers to minimum wage in the absence of a budget. The court, agreeing with a Sacramento Superior Court ruling, said State Controller John Chiang overstepped his authority by refusing to issue minimum-wage paychecks to state workers during the 2008 budget impasse. The decision, published just moments ago, comes the day after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Department of Personnel Administration gave Chiang the same pay reduction instructions the controller rejected two years ago. Chiang's office has not said whether it will appeal to the...

The Schwarzenegger administration today ordered State Controller John Chiang to reduce state worker pay for July to the federal minimum allowed by law -- $7.25 an hour for most state workers. The instructions from the Department of Personnel Administration exclude roughly 37,000 state workers in six bargaining units that recently came to tentative labor agreements with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Because of a 2006 constitutional amendment, Nevada's minimum-wage will increase by 70 cents an hour on July 1.Nevada's hourly minimum wage is set to jump 70 cents, or 9.3 percent, on Thursday, from $7.55 to $8.25 for workers who don't receive health benefits through their employer. For workers with company-sponsored health insurance, the minimum will rise 10.7 percent, from $6.55 to $7.25. Credit the increases to a referendum Nevada's voters passed in 2006. The law pushed the Silver State's minimum wage for uninsured workers $1 per hour higher than the federal rate, and required Nevada's base wage to rise every...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger plans to cut the pay of state workers to minimum wage if a timely budget accord is not reached, according to a memo sent Wednesday from the director of the governor's Department of Personnel Administration to state agency and department heads. The memo, written by DPA director Debbie Endsley, also warned that Schwarzenegger could order more controversial furloughs, even though the state's final scheduled furlough day for tens of thousands of employees was last Friday. "The Governor retains the right and authority to order furloughs if necessary to address a fiscal and cash crisis," Endsley wrote. The...

While the state's political attention was focused on this week's election, the days have been ticking away toward the deadline for a new state budget. State workers have been watching that story closely because if lawmakers don't get a budget passed by July 1, the Schwarzenegger administration is threatening to drop state employees to the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour until a budget is passed

Hoping to head off an order to drastically reduce state worker pay if budget talks stall, Controller John Chiang's office sent a message to employee unions this week suggesting they reach out to a friend – U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis. Although the three-page plain-paper memo acquired by The Bee is unsigned, the controller's office confirmed that Chiang Chief of Staff Collin Wong-Martinusen wrote the document circulated to labor leaders on Monday. "Seek Solis' immediate intervention on an unprecedented pay practice that, if allowed to proceed in California could become the new norm for all state and municipal governments that...

Like a rite of passage, when June begins and May ends, it's time for teenagers to get out of school and look for a summer job. Be it pizza place or camp or McDonalds, a job is key in both learning experience and cash reserves. But this year, the job market for teens will become more congested and competitive. EconomPic points out that this could be the worst summer for jobs for teenagers since the Great Depression: "...while the unemployment rate among 16-17 year olds is 29.1% (from a 1980's peak of 27.1%), that rate is missing the fact that...

Hidden inside the latest Democratic spending bill is an $18 million taxpayer handout to American Samoa. How did that get in there? Read on for another lesson in the uncreative jobs destruction of the minimum wage. When Democrats in Congress increased the minimum wage in 2007, the U.S. territory of 65,000 in the South Pacific pleaded for its traditional exemption from the wage law to prevent job losses. But Democrats followed union orders and said that if multinational companies like StarKist, one of Samoa's largest employers, could pay its CEO millions it could afford to pay workers $7.25 an hour....

PAGO PAGO, American Samoa (AP) ― American Samoa's last remaining tuna cannery announced it is cutting its work force in the U.S. territory by an additional 600 to 800 people to keep up with global competition. Pittsburgh-based StarKist Co. said Thursday in a news release that the layoffs over the next six months will shrink its American Samoa work force to less than 1,200 employees, down from a high of more than 3,000 in 2008. StarKist President and CEO Don Binotto said in the release that it is difficult to compete when workers' wages are nearly 10 times those of...

Michigan - One of the entry-level jobs at the City of Ann Arbor's waste transfer station entails separating glass bottles from aluminum as they come down a conveyor belt. For that job, FCR, the company that manages the waste station, usually pays the minimum wage of $7.40 an hour. But because the city of Ann Arbor passed a "living wage" ordinance, those sorters make $13.05 an hour this year. Thanks to a deal struck with the City Council, the city reimburses FCR so that it can pay the higher "living wage." But a recent Michigan Supreme Court decision may invalidate...

A budget gimmick that lawmakers embraced last year may soon bite state workers in the paycheck – and give Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger a stick to wield in his last budget go-round with Democrats. The lesson in unforeseen political consequences starts in 2008. As usual, budget talks that summer among Republicans, Democrats and the governor were in a ditch. The fiscal year ended on June 30 with no deal. A few weeks later, Schwarzenegger ordered state worker wages for August withheld to the then- federal minimum of $6.55 per hour, or zero for workers in a few job classes, until...

Which allows an American Samoan worker to have a higher standard of living: being employed at $3.26 per hour or unemployed at a wage scheduled to annually increase by 50 cents until it reaches federally mandated wages at $7.25? You say, "Williams, that's a stupid question. Who would support people being unemployed at $7.25 an hour over being employed at $3.26 an hour?" That's precisely the outcome of Congress' 2007 increases in the minimum wage. Chicken of the Sea International moved its operation from Samoa to a highly automated cannery plant in Lyon, Georgia. That resulted in roughly 2,000 jobs...

We have all heard the saying that "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." This saying could not be more true than when it comes to minimum wage. Liberals determine whether a policy is "good" entirely on what it should do, rather than what it actually does. Liberal policy makers decide they want to raise the incomes of individuals (salaries), when they should seek to increase the spending power of individuals (which would happen from increased productivity and the lower costs that follows).

Four Detroit public high schools have decided classroom time should be used to train 60 students to work at Walmart. A new partnership gives participants 11 weeks of job-readiness training during the day and a Walmart job after school. Students earn 10 credits toward graduation… Advocates say with Detroit’s unofficial unemployment rate nearing 50%, jobs at Walmart are a golden opportunity. Sean Vann, principal of the Frederick Douglass Academy for Young Men, has 30 students in the program. He told the Detroit Free Press he’s enthusiastic because along with earning money, since the schools are in the suburbs, the students...