Neither Bush *OR* Valerie’s man child have any business getting between the pay of an employer and an employee. None.
If an employer doesn’t pay the promised salary or holds someone against their will, the state can get involved if need be.
Simply put, PRICE and WAGE controls *do not work*. Thomas Sowell’s brilliant book “Basic Economics” explains this in laymen’s terms...and my theory is that Obama KNOWS all this, but just doesn’t care.
The people he SAYS he is trying to help are going to get hurt. They will be let go, or they will be hired at JUST ABOVE the threshold then worked harder than ever.
Little is even thought of the freedom of the small businessman, who wants to give someone experience and management training. Instead, this fellow is the “The Forgotten Man” Amity Shlaes wrote about—the small businessman who just won’t expand or hire someone. Why? The cost is too high.
Whatever the reasons Bush gave for doing something similar, I am CERTAIN they weren’t done in the face of these factors: shrinking GDP, record decline in work force participation, an increase of 80% in the national debt, and as a lame duck.
This was a political move, not an economic one.
For all these reasons, it ought to be opposed.
I already said that I oppose the minimum wage in its entirety. All it does is it eliminates whole classes of entry-level jobs like full service gas station attendants, street sweepers, and etc.
But if you’re going to have a minimum wage then this threshold needs to go with it to prevent people from being labeled as exempt just to evade paying them minimum wage.