How could anyone be against doubling the national minimum wage from a meager $7.25 an hour to $15.00 an hour? How can anyone be expected to live on $7.25 an hour or about $14000 per year? Certainly, no one could support a family on such an income.
Increasing the minimum wage is so popular that Democrats from President Biden on down will use the issue like a sledgehammer to beat down Republican opposition. A liberal columnist in my local newspaper devoted his last column to berating small business owners for opposing the increase in the minimum wage even though Connecticut’s minimum is well above the average. He went so far as to tell these employers to go out of business if they could not afford to give their employees a 50% increase from $10 to $15 an hour. Did it occur to him that if these employers went out of business, their employees would have no income?
That made me smile because a couple of years ago, I sent an article to that paper for publication. The editor accepted it but told me that the paper could not afford to pay me for it. I guess the minimum wage at his paper was Zero. A few years ago, I did get paid for a submission to the Wall Street Journal, a profit-making news organization with a conservative editorial bent.
It will do no good for economists or journalists to point out that increases in the minimum wage will cause many low-income employees to lose their jobs, and find that their wage has been reduced to zero.
Nor will it do any good to point out that most people who earn the minimum wage are not just living on the minimum. Often the minimum wage earner is not the sole support of a family. Often, their wages are supplemented by employee benefits or government subsidies and tax credits. Today, an article in the Wall St. Journal estimated that these benefits could amount to over $40000 per year. Any such arguments will be drowned by placard waving protestors.
I would like to urge liberals and progressive supporters who support increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour to practice it themselves. Instead of asking business owners to cut into their profits, university professors can reduce their salaries in order to increase the wages of the miserably underpaid “adjunct” instructors or graduate assistants that universities hire to save money. Even university student activists could voluntarily pay increased fees in order to raise the salaries of the cafeteria ladies and janitors.
A few years ago, my wife’s cousin told me about the problem that her home cleaning business was facing in Martha’s Vineyard, the toney retreat of wealthy liberals like ex-President Obama. In her business she complied with all the various government rules and regulations but found that she was losing customers to immigrant labor that did not comply with such things as workers’ comp or minimum wage. Apparently, liberals can be soft-hearted when it comes to other people’s money, but hard-hearted when it comes to their own.
Of course, all of the above would be met with the greatest resistance. When progressives call for increases in the minimum wage, they always expect and want someone else to bear the cost. The professors and the students can be excused for their innocence, but the unions have a baser reason for supporting increasing the minimum wage.
Suppose you were running a small business and you hired a high school or college student to do basic office work like filing papers. Suppose you even started the student at $10 an hour, more than the current minimum. You might have other employees in the office making $20 an hour. What would these employees think if you had to raise the student’s pay to $15 an hour? Wouldn’t you have to raise their pay to $30 an hour because the work they were doing was twice as valuable as the student’s?
Actually, this is the reason why unions are big supporters of increases in the minimum wage. Union employees all earn more than the minimum wage but every time the minimum is raised, they insist on, and usually get, corresponding increases in their own pay scales. They could care less about people who are actually earning the minimum wage. They even care little about their own members who are at the bottom of the wage scale. Rather than cut their own pay or benefits, they will normally acquiesce in the layoff of younger, recently hired union members when times get tough.
The best cure for low wages is full or high employment. Before the pandemic hit, the number of unemployed has dropped to record levels. Moreover, the level of part-time employment had also declined as increasing numbers of part-time workers found full-time jobs. In the first three years of the Trump administration there was a scarcity of workers that inevitably led to higher wages for all. Job mobility, not minimum wage laws, leads to higher income.
Ironically, what liberals give with one hand they usually take away with the other. The almost $2 Trillion Covid spending bill provides a good example. Where is the government getting the money to dole out? It is already trillions in debt. It must either borrow more money or print more paper. The stimulus checks we get are like Monopoly money, and they will buy less and less.
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Your arguments have been made every time a higher minimum wage has been proposed. Each time raising it has made little change in the demise of small businesses.
ReplyDeleteI am glad that, even as a single woman, I don’t have to live on $300 a week. By the way, I pay my cleaning lady waaaaay more that $7.50 an hour! And, I am not a progressive. I was a Republican for most of my adult life. I
I agree with you that it is difficult to live on $300 per week but it is even more difficult to love on zero per week. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that 1.4 Million jobs would be lost if the $15 minimum wage was instituted nationwide.
DeleteAs you say, suburban cleaning ladies probably don't need to be concerned with the minimum wage. My neighbor's cleaning lady drives a Mercedes. But what would you say if your cleaning lady asked you to double her pay? or what would you do if the government required you to double her pay?
Frank