RUSH: Young Student Gets Limbaugh Lesson on the Minimum Wage

www.RushLimbaugh.Com ^ | Oct 27, 2017 | Rush Limbaugh

[Yosemitest]

Young Student Gets Limbaugh Lesson on the Minimum Wage
Oct 27, 2017


RUSH: This is Caden in Reno.
Great to have you.

CALLER: Hi, Mr. Limbaugh. RUSH: Hi.

CALLER: This is just an honor.
I just want to say how much of an honor this is to be speaking with you on your show.
I am just… I’m doing a speech on Monday in my speech and debate class on why the minimum wage should NOT be increased.

RUSH: Mmm-hmm.

CALLER: And I would like to…
I was wondering if you could give me a couple of talking points on why
raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour would affect the economy
or just business in general.

RUSH: Okay.
Caden, but first, before I answer this,
do you have a computer ?
Are you able Google things and search them ?

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: Okay.
Because you’re gonna need to do this because you’re gonna find the evidence I’m gonna give you.

CALLER: Okay. RUSH: Seattle.
You need to search “Seattle and restaurants” and find out what happened to them after the minimum wage was raised to $15 an hour.
A bunch of restaurants closed, Caden.
Raising the minimum wage
— choosing an arbitrary number that has nothing to do with the market and demanding that the least qualified earn that money —
means that people get fired.
Businesses do not have a pile of money they’re not using
that they can go raise wages from.
They have to earn it via sales or whatever.

So what happens when the minimum wage is raised arbitrarily on the command of government
is that people lose their jobs.
More people end up out of work,
and the resulting increase in the minimum wage is not enough to counterbalance that at all.
But you Google “Seattle and restaurants,” and you’ll find out
the number of restaurants that have had to close since they raised the minimum wage to $15.
It will be your argument right there.
You can do your entire report on that story.



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Related Links



• Washington Post: A ‘very credible’ new study on Seattle’s $15 minimum wage has bad news for liberals

[Yosemitest]

Thanks Rush.
It's encouraging to hear your students ask intelligent questions.

TO CADEN in Reno:

Here's some more information from the past, for your speech:



Minimum-wage increase proposals are NOT about minimum wages.
It's about UNION wages (read government employees mostly) and UNION DUES.
Like "Artie" on another thread wrote.

"but my theory is that
this is one of the foundations of single payer.
Down the road, as single payer replaces ObamaCare,
all healthcare workers will become in essence government employees.
Think about how many thousands of new, dues paying union members will magically become part of the SEIU.

Barry had sealed this deal with Andy Stern years ago.
Barry promised Andy and the SEIU thousands of new members,
Andy says
great,
this is the wage structure we need
so we can pay the slush fund.
Gotta pay a living wage to all of the new union members
so dues can be extracted
and kickbacks to the dems can be made.
It’s convoluted
but what dem scheme isn’t,
especially when large sums of cash are involved?"



So read the following:

Union Support Of Minimum Wage Hike Is Self-Interested
By RICHARD BERMAN on Aug 26, 2013 (Berman is the executive director at the Center for Union Facts. )

Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, ... was quick to emphasize that her organization's support of a more-than-twofold increase in the minimum wage was "not about growing unions."

This may be true — but it's also undeniable that such a move would have a profound impact on growing union paychecks, even if those unions don't count a single minimum-wage employee in their ranks.

The fine print can be found in union contracts. Each year, the Department of Labor's Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS) releases a number of union collective bargaining agreements (CBAs).

Unsurprisingly, many CBAs available in the OLMS database LINK union salaries and wage rates to the federal minimum wage. There are a number of methods that unions use to accomplish this end. The two most popular appear to be setting baseline union wages as a percentage above the minimum wage, and mandating a flat wage at a set level above the minimum wage.

One example is a series of CBAs signed with the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE). Their contracts mandated that
"(w)henever the federal legal minimum wage is increased, minimum wage (in the agreement) shall be increased so that each will be at least fifteen (15%) percent higher than such legal minimum wage."

There's also an SEIU local's contract, which ordered that
"(t)he minimum hourly wage rates shall exceed any statutory applicable minimum wage rate by 50 cents."

Some unions have also arranged contracts where the employer MUST renegotiate their contracts in case of a minimum-wage hike, NO MATTER HOW LONG is left on the pact's life span.

The possibility for abuse here is staggering:
Unions with average wages WELL ABOVE the minimum wage CAN INSERT such clauses into their contracts, FORCING negotiations in industries not otherwise affected by a wage hike.

Given the limited number of CBAs available in the OLMS database, it's impossible to determine just how widespread this practice is.

But at least one union has trumpeted this arrangement as "one of the many advantages of being a union member."

Earlier this year on its blog, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union proudly boasted that "oftentimes, union contracts ARE TRIGGERED TO IMPLEMENT WAGE HIKES IN CASE OF MINIMUM WAGE INCREASES."

This is a stunning admission of SELF-INTERESTt for an organization that's actively PUSHING minimum-wage hikes at both the state and federal levels of government.

It also raises questions about unions' growing use of nonunion "worker centers" like the Restaurant Opportunities Center, OUR Walmart, Fast Food Forward and other organizations that have made headlines in recent months.

These groups advocate many policies that would affect those businesses that pay a minimum wage — restaurants, retailers, etc. — and a minimum-wage hike is often the FIRST demand that these union front groups make. This only casts further suspicion on the motives of the labor unions funding these groups.

No matter how you look at it, the benefits that these unions stand to reap from a minimum-wage hike should raise questions about their real motives — and whether they're only manipulating the debate over fast-food wages for their own benefit.



Berman is the executive director at the Center for Union Facts.

I hope your speech goes well.

[I want the USA back]

The government does not have the right to set a minimum or maximum hourly rate of pay.

[Former Proud Canadian]

And yet, they do so. How strange.

[Yosemitest]

I agree.
But the government doesn't.

Until we start turning some of these communists government officials into feed for worms and daisies, they won't take us seriously.

[Ciexyz]

I stopped eating out at fast food places a couple years ago because it’s cheaper to make the same type of food at home. They priced themselves out of my market.

[ConservaTeen]

Caren, hope your speech gets you an A+

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

You do understand the irony involved in instructing a student in a government school to explain to the teacher ^{union shop steward} the evils of government unions . . .

Rush’s answer was good, but on reflection Rush would have done well to have brought it down to the child’s level more by pointing out that the child’s allowance would not be raised by a government law saying that entry-level employees have to be paid $15/hr. And that therefore the student would have to know that he would not be able to buy a hamburger at McDonald’s as often if the price of the hamburger went up a lot.

What happens when all potential customers find that they can’t afford something as easily? All potential customers buy fewer McDonald’s hamburgers. What happens then? McDonald’s fires somebody who isn’t busy because people aren’t buying as many hamburgers. Even if that doesn’t happen, somebody who was planning to build a McDonald’s in your neighborhood decides she would be better off just keeping the money in the bank because fewer people are buying hamburgers.

Now look at what happened in Seattle - restaurants which had already been in business shut down! If that happens to your neighborhood McDonald’s, they take down the Golden Arches, but the rest of the building just sits there, in an empty parking lot, looking forlorn, dark, and empty. Nobody can get a hamburger there, and nobody gets paid for working there - not $15/hr, not $10 an hour, not anything.

The real “minimum wage” is zero. And if you can’t get a job at McDonald's, that’s exactly what you get from McDonald's.

[Yosemitest]

Like Rush said:

(It) "means that people get fired."
... " people lose their jobs."
"More people end up out of work, ... "

It's just THAT SIMPLE !

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

The real “minimum wage” is zero. And if you can’t get a job at McDonald's, that’s exactly what you get from McDonald’s.

BUT. If you do get a job at McDonald’s, you get more than just the money. You get the satisfaction of knowing that you earned it. You know that nobody held a gun to anyone’s head to make them give the money to you, but that you are pulling your freight. And in a first job, that can be an astonishing satisfaction - a revelation.

[Yosemitest]

"And in a first job, that can be an astonishing satisfaction - a revelation."

'Nuff said.

[zeestephen]

As I write this, none of the comments on this thread have addressed a well concealed fact...

Massive LEGAL immigration, which is enthusiastically supported by both major political parties and by President Trump, has created a massive, and completely artificial, over-supply of low skill labor.

The result is Economics 101.

Huge labor supply? Wages go down.

When wages go down? Investors and managers develop long term business plans that depend on low wages, and they pressure government to keep wages low.

When wages go up? Businesses begin to fail because they did not invest in labor saving devices and software, and because their customers refuse to pay higher prices for the same old products.

I support a $15 minimum wage, indexed to inflation.

It will bring massive legal and illegal immigration to a screeching halt.

And it will bring massive productivity increases to previously moribund sectors of the American economy.

[Yosemitest]

"I support a $15 minimum wage, indexed to inflation.
It will bring massive legal and illegal immigration to a screeching halt.
And it will bring massive productivity increases to previously moribund sectors of the American economy."

I don't !
And ... NO, it won't !

[joedish]

Why your magic 15? 20, 30 or 50? What makes 15 the correct number? I am a free human being (right?), you want rules that I cannot sell my own labor at whatever rate I think is right for me? Minimum wages aren’t just a bad economic policy, they are wrong from a freedom policy. Every other argument that is made to limit my rights, treats me as less then a free thinking adult. Maybe rules for those under the legal voting age, I might have a small amount of support.

[zeestephen]

Re: “What makes 15 the correct number?”

I have no idea what the correct number is. Since $15 seems to have the most political support, I just go with that.

Bottom Line...

Since the USA does not have a free market economy, then free market solutions - like no minimum wage - are often useless, impossible, or harmful.

To repeat what I stated in my first post:

I support a strictly enforced high minimum wage because it compels business owners to invest in labor saving technology.

And, because it will make massive legal and illegal immigration politically and economically impossible.

[The Bat Lady]

Many years ago when they were talking about upping the min. wage my top paid employee asked if I was going to give everyone a raise if the min. wage went thru.

I said, “well as the highest paid person in the industry in this town WHY would I increase your pay?”

She said something about unions pay connected to the min. wage. I said, “well you aren’t in a union and you are paid WAYYYYY above the min. wage.”

She said something about starting a union shop. (I was not very politically aware at that time but knew enough that I didn’t want the union anywhere around me.)

I told her the day you bring the union in this place I will SHUT THE STORE DOWN AND NO ONE WILL HAVE A JOB. I’m not having the union raise wages and then charge them the same amount in dues to end up going to the Dem party.

She shut up about unions for good.

[Yosemitest]

I agree with your position.
Unions serve no one except their own managers.
Union workers be damned and are nothing but slaves to the union.
To HELL with unions !