Free Republic

resident Barack Obama, in his State of the Union speech, called for a minimum-wage hike and for government-mandated paid family and medical leave. "We are the only advanced country on Earth," said the President, "that doesn't guarantee paid sick leave or paid maternity leave to our workers." On the minimum wage, Obama issued this challenge: "And to everyone in this Congress who still refuses to raise the minimum wage, I say this: If you truly believe you could work full-time and support a family on less than $15,000 a year, try it. If not, vote to give millions of the...

Minimum Wage: Fast-food workers engage in a nationwide "Fight for 15" while ignoring the economic reality of higher prices, fewer jobs and the sawing off of that first rung on the economic ladder of success. In a scene repeated in various cities across the country last Thursday, roughly 50 people were arrested as they protested in front of two Chicago-area fast-food restaurants as part of the push for a $15-per-hour minimum wage for fast-food workers, what they call a "living wage." These protests, organized by the infamous purple shirts of the Service Employees International Union, simply ignore economic reality. It...

McDonald’s employees who picketed for a better living wage (whatever that means) may come to regret that decision.... a McDonald’s in Illinois replaced their cashiers with machines. The machines appear to be the cousins of the ones found in grocery stores, big box stores, and CVS that allow customers to complete transactions... This is all basic economics, really. As costs of labor increase the added cost must be offset. In order to satisfy operating costs, produce a product consumers want to purchase, and still turn a profit, it’s perfectly reasonable for a company like McDonald’s to look for cost-cutting alternatives.......

Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy is still a cause célèbre for the right-wing, drawing praise from Tea Party activists, Republican politicians, and conservative media outlets. Kevin Williamson of National Review called him a “dissident” like Mohandas Gandhi or Henry David Thoreau, Nevada Sen. Dean Heller hailed him as a “patriot,” and Sean Hannity has praised him as somebody that’s “willing to fight.” This was bad enough as an instance of conservative recklessness when Bundy was just a lawless rancher backed by armed militamen. It’s even worse now that we know that Bundy is full of racist bones. Here he is, as...

In the series "The Secret Life of a Food Stamp," Marketplace reporter Krissy Clark traces how big-box stores make billions from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, aka food stamps. What's more, the wages of many workers at these stores are so low that the workers themselves qualify for food stamps—which the employees then often spend at those big-box stores...

Laura Bailey said she used to make $60,000 a year in a government job. Now the 45-year-old makes about $15,600 working fulltime at a fast-food restaurant. A tragic series of events – job loss, her husband’s death, a serious illness – sent the mother of two spiraling from a comfortable life in Crownsville to homelessness and joblessness. After countless attempts to find clerical work, Bailey took a position in the Arundel Mills outlet mall for $7.80 an hour. In her off-hours, she’s been an advocate for raising the $7.25 minimum hourly wage, a proposal gaining momentum in the Maryland General...

Maryland’s Catholic bishops released a joint statement Jan. 20 urging fair treatment of workers. The statement coincides with Poverty Awareness Month and the state’s legislative session, where increasing the minimum wage and mandating paid sick leave for low-wage workers are already in the spotlight. The bishops make clear they want Maryland to enact legislation promoting “just compensation and a healthy work environment.” “While we hope one day the issue of raising the minimum wage will be addressed at the federal level, we cannot afford to wait in Maryland,” they stated. Titled “The Dignity of Work,” the one-page statement was released...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog In the real world, no liberal has ever bought a McDonald’s franchise and paid the workers $15 an hour Recently, Huffington Post published an article about how easy it would supposedly be for McDonald’s to pay its’ employees $15 an hour. Soon afterward, they took the original article down, and replaced it with this article, which admits that the original article had been wrong.But I knew they were wrong before they admitted it. Having read the original article, one thing I noticed was that it wrongly assumed that the demand for McDonald’s food would not go...

A few words about the McBudget. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. As fast food workers around the country protest for higher wages, we learn that McDonald’s offers advice to help them live on the wages they make which, while not technically bupkes, do amount to a paycheck you can pretty much have the driver cash for you on the bus ride home. In December, for example, Bloomberg profiled a Chicago man who, after 20 years with the burger giant, earns $8.25 an hour — and doesn’t get 40 hours a week. This, as McDonald’s CEO Don Thompson pulled down, according...

Leadership: If Washington, D.C.'s local politicians have their way, three new Wal-Marts planned for the troubled city will not be built. Oh boy! Just what the capital's struggling residents need: fewer jobs and higher prices. ngaclThe extraordinarily unwise politicians who run the nation's capital have decided to pass a law that would require so-called "big box" retailers — Wal-Mart, in other words — to pay their workers a "living wage" of at least $12.50 an hour. Wal-Mart employees nationwide average just under $9 an hour. Wal-Mart is already building three stores in D.C., and has plans for three more. But...

The term “social justice”… is the key term and concept of Catholic social teaching … with all the other aspects of the Church’s social doctrine—the principle of subsidiarity, the just wage or the right to private property—are related to, and rely, on the existence of social justice. The term “social justice,” though common enough today, is little understood by most of those who use it—whether they consider themselves friends and practitioners of social justice, or they regard it as a suspect term of probably socialist origin. But the term does have a precise meaning. That meaning and the significance of...

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...

Chicago considers requiring 'Living wage' for retailers at airports Posted: October 6th, 2011 10:10 AM CDT FRAN SPIELMAN. City Hall Reporter. fspielman@suntimes.comChicago Sun-Times O'Hare and Midway Airport retailers would be required to pay their 1,500 employees a "living wage" of $11.18-an-hour - even if it means raising the sky-high prices they charge their captive audience of air travelers - under a plan that's gaining political steam. During a rally before Wednesday's City Council meeting, 18 aldermen stood shoulder-to-shoulder with members of Unite Here Local 1 to support an ordinance timed to coincide with Mayor Rahm Emanuel's concession makeover at both...

In this epsiode of the Conscience of Kansas radio program I do follow up on the Pima County Sheriff recall election. I give the list of the 50 most dangerous liberals as listed by TownHall.com. I talk in detail about the Living Wage Proposal for the city of Manhattan Kansas and why it is a bad idea and so much more. We invite you to listen and comment!

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...

The Obama administration is planning to use the government’s enormous buying power to prod private companies to improve wages and benefits for millions of workers, according to White House officials and several interest groups briefed on the plan. By altering how it awards $500 billion in contracts each year, the government would disqualify more companies with labor, environmental or other violations and give an edge to companies that offer better levels of pay, health coverage, pensions and other benefits, the officials said. Because nearly one in four workers is employed by companies that have contracts with the federal government, administration...

“Liberalism always generates the exact opposite of its stated intent.” - Jim Quinn It was January of 2007 when the House passes the first minimum wage increase in a decade. Senate Republicans added a ton of tax breaks to small businesses to the minimum wage increase before passing it in February. They bickered back and forth for a month or three, then finally attached the bill to a war spending bill and Bush signed it into law. I was against it, saying first of all it was unConstitutional. I also said it would cost jobs, because businesses could either raise...

The Fox Theater restaurant is proving a hard hole to fill. Dozens of restaurateurs have toured the 3,000-square-foot space, and no fewer than eight have said they can’t make a project pencil out at that site due to Oakland’s living wage requirement. The Fox hole’s fortunes could be turning, however. Business proposals from restaurateurs were due Nov. 17, and three were submitted. Phil Tagami, whose firm, California Capital Group, has managed the Fox rebirth, said that two other parties unaware of the formal proposal process expressed interest in the site, despite the wage requirements. He declined to say who submitted...

A judge Friday delivered a stinging rebuke to Los Angeles' labor and political leadership, barring the city from enforcing a ballyhooed new ordinance that would have extended the city's "living wage" protections to workers at hotels near Los Angeles International Airport. The eight-page order by Superior Court Judge David P. Yaffe went far beyond merely blocking a law that had been considered a point of pride for the city's powerful labor interests. As a practical matter, Yaffe dealt a political defeat to the City Council, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the union that championed the law. During a yearlong political and...

Los Angeles (AP) -- A Superior Court judge blocked a new law extending the city's "living wage" law to workers at airport-area hotels from taking effect until May at the earliest. Wednesday's ruling came in response to a challenge filed by seven of the 12 hotels that would be required to pay all workers $10.64 an hour including health benefits under a law signed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.