Free Republic

It's an election year, meaning some politicians will be more interested in good politics rather than good policy. Reeling from woes created by the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), many legislators are turning to an issue that polling data shows to be popular: Increasing the minimum wage. This issue might be good politics, but it has negative consequences that harm real people. Minimum wage laws make it illegal to be employed for less than a set amount mandated by government. The main arguments in favor of raising this wage floor rest primarily on two premises.The first is that politicians can do...

Have you ever wondered why poor people are poor? It's not as though there aren't plenty of role models around. Millions of people live highly successful, productive lives in this country. So why don't people at the bottom of the income ladder copy the behavior of those several rungs above them and better their lot in life? As I wrote previously, the federal government's own pilot programs established conclusively from the very early days of the War on Poverty that the welfare state encourages people not to be married, not to work and not to invest in human capital. This...

Mayor Ed Murray’s minimum wage advisory committee is “deadlocked,” Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant said Friday, with the socialist officeholder pledging she will now work to “build a strong coalition in the streets.” Sawant and two other left-leaning City Council members sit on the panel, which is co-chaired by business leader Howard S. Wright III, CEO of Seattle Hospitality Group, and Service Employees Union leader David Rolf, the city’s most able labor leader. The statement by Sawant comes amids increasing indications that Seattle voters will have the final say on on the minimum wage issue. And, like Washington voters...

This is a letter to the employees of a local restaurant. It's survived for decades, but is finally closing due to the latest increase in California's minimum wage. I guess it's better for the employees to have a higher wage, but no job with which to earn it.

Using catchy sound bites like "give America a raise," President Obama ignores volumes of research showing that his demand to increase the minimum wage will be a jobs killer. Nevertheless, the president came to Michigan last week and campaigned for raising the cost of providing the jobs that millions of young people need to gain entry into the workforce, or that provide supplemental income for many families. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that under the president's plan, 500,000 of these jobs would probably disappear, and possibly as many as 1 million. Vernuccio Last month, more than 500 economists signed...

Last week, President Barack Obama visited Zingerman’s Deli in Ann Arbor in a self-professed politically motivated press stop. The president is pushing to raise the national minimum wage. Zingerman's co-owner, Paul Saginaw, went to Washington, D.C., in January to lobby for an increased minimum wage. So what was reported about the president's visit to Ann Arbor? Paragraphs of detail on the $14 Reuben sandwich the president ate. What wasn’t reported? That the reason for the visit — to promote increasing the minimum wage — will reportedly result in the loss of around 500,000 jobs, according to a report from the...

Tens of thousands of Minnesota workers have big raises coming their way, courtesy of a new minimum wage law that Gov. Mark Dayton signed Monday, which will take the state from one of the nation’s lowest rates to among the highest. At a ceremony in the Capitol’s Rotunda, Dayton hailed the hourly jump of more than $3 spread over the next few years as providing “what’s fair” for hard work put in. He said he has been stunned by GOP resistance—it passed the Legislature with only Democratic votes—to increasing the guaranteed wage from $6.15 per hour now to $9.50 by...

The Maryland Catholic Conference counts the boost in minimum wage and full funding of two programs benefiting nonpublic schools among its successes as the General Assembly adjourned April 7. Legislators passed a bill April 7 raising the state’s minimum hourly wage from $7.25 to $10.10 incrementally by 2018. The final bill does not require, as earlier drafts did, that the wage be indexed to inflation. It also extended by one year the original proposal’s timeline for the full wage increase to take effect. The MCC, which advocates for public policy on behalf of the state’s Catholic bishops, supported a general...

The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce is “outraged” over a ballot measure to raise San Francisco’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, saying in a statement on Monday that it “flies in the face of collaboration and partnership.” The measure would lift base pay about 40 percent from its current $10.74, making San Francisco’s minimum wage the highest in the country. Activists were expected to file papers on Monday for the November ballot. The measure, designed by SEIU Local 1021, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, and other activist groups, would give companies with fewer than 100 employees until...

Ladies and gentlemen, I’m Joe Biden. I’m filling in for President Obama, who is abroad. I want to talk to you today about the minimum wage and the overwhelming need to raise the minimum wage. There’s no reason in the world why an American working 40 hours a week has to live in poverty. But right now a worker earning the federal minimum wage makes about $14,500 a year. And you all know that's incredibly hard for an individual to live on, let alone raise a family on. But if we raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, that...

<p>In legislative session today, state Sens. Daylin Leach (D-Montgomery/Delaware), and Mike Stack (D-Philadelphia) introduced legislation, S.B. 1317, a bill that would end the allowance of a sub-minimum wage for employees who receive tips and raise the overall minimum wage to $12 an hour.</p>

Our post-partisan President reached a new low yesterday. Speaking at Zingerman’s in Ann Arbor, Michigan he declared Paul Ryan’s budget a “stinkburger” or “meanwich.” Obama is apparently promoting an increase in the minimum wage. He went to Zingerman’s because they allegedly offer a “fair” wage. The left doesn’t seem to understand that a “fair” wage is whatever an employee agrees to work for. In other words, it isn’t determined by government bureaucrats or academics. That’s beside the point of course, we know Obama believes everything in our lives must be decided in Washington. The problem of course is that Zingerman’s...

>A new study by the free-market American Action Forum found that states with minimum wages higher than the federal minimum suffer from higher unemployment. Researchers looked at labor data from both the nineteen states that as of 2013 had enforced minimum wages above $7.25 per hour and the thirty-one states that had minimum wages equal to $7.25.Overall, they found that just a $1 increase in the minimum wage was “associated with a 1.48 percentage point increase in the unemployment rate,” and a “0.18 percentage point decrease in the net job growth rate.”A higher minimum wage thus led to the unemployment...

The number of minimum wage workers with college degrees is still more than double what it was during the Bush years. ... If you thought paying tens of thousands of dollars for a college education guaranteed a high-paying job, think again. Obamanomics in action… 260,000 college graduates are stuck in minimum wage jobs.

It’s difficult to understand liberals when you don’t live in their sheltered cocoon of participation trophies, faux caring and feel-good lies. Those of us who labor in the real world – who built this country, who make it work and who defend it – deal with reality. Most liberals don’t. And that can be baffling, because when they speak they sound like visitors from the planet Nimrod. Now, some liberals do understand the real world. They are the cynical liberal icons, the ones who know their entire ideology is a scam designed to wring power and wealth from the gullible....

By the time ObamaCare and the minimum wage get done wiping out jobs, everyone will need that basic guaranteed income that libs love talking about. Citing Obamacare and an increase in the stateÂ’s minimum wage, the owner of Waterford-based Yankee One Dollar is closing down shop on all 23 remaining locations.Its owner Keith Flike blamed the Affordable Care Act and the increase in the stateÂ’s minimum wage for the decision to shut down. Each store has six to 10 employees, he told the Post Star. Those are just more employees who have been liberated from job lock to explore their...

Vice President Joe Biden said Congress should raise the minimum wage because it’s good for people, business, women, and the economy. He thinks you ought to call your do-nothing representative and ask why they’re not passing a raise for the people. Smokin’ Joe also burned a certain Speaker by saying that Congress ought to do it because it’s what the people want. But I’m sure Joe knows that Speaker Boehner (R-OH) can’t be bothered with what the people want. After all, he’s got an itty bitty circus tent full of extremists’ egos to stroke in an election year, since they’re...

New Britain -- Precisely timed to attract live coverage Thursday at the top of three local 6 o'clock newscasts, a jubilant Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed into law a bill that makes Connecticut the first state to embrace President Obama's goal of a $10.10 minimum wage.

The state's minimum wage will increase to $10.10 per hour by 2017 under a controversial bill approved Wednesday by both the state Senate and the House of Representatives on largely party line votes. The Senate passed the measure by 21 to 14, with all Republicans and one Democrat — Sen. Joan Hartley of Waterbury — voting no. One senator was absent. The House vote was 87 to 54, and all 87 supporters were Democrats. Four House Democrats, including Representatives John Hampton of Simsbury and Joe Diminico of Manchester, joined with Republicans against the measure. The bill would boost the wage...

The minimum wage has been in the news a lot lately due to proposals at the state and federal levels to increase it and because of a February Congressional Budget Office report on the subject. Among all the policy subjects up for debate, there is perhaps no easier conclusion to draw than that minimum wage mandates are jobs killers. Both economic theory and empirical evidence — despite some recent claims to the contrary — make it clear that mandating an artificially high minimum wage leads to job losses. First, consider the theory behind the economics. Basic price theory informs us...