Free Republic

Many of the minimum wage laws passed in recent years, including in major cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago, include waivers allowing unionized businesses to pay their employees below the minimum.The waivers in effect make unionizing workers a low-cost option for businesses unwilling or unable to pay the new minimum wage, which in cities such as San Francisco and SeaTac, Wash., which also has a waiver, will climb as high as $15 an hour when fully phased in. In those cities, businesses can sign a collective bargaining agreement with a union that sets the wages below the...

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...

In the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston back in 2015, the people at the nonprofit organization Haley House came up with a novel idea. They would open a pizza shop based on the principles of economic justice and fair wages to support the community. Named Dudley Dough, the shop would pay wages far above the minimum which many people in that industry earn, with added incentives for training and community development. It was an inspiring idea. Unfortunately for them, only two years later the place is closing down. It turns out that operating a for-profit business on the principles of a...

The push to raise Mexico’s low wages got some unusual champions Monday. The Mexican Employers’ Federation said the minimum wage should be raised 19 percent, to the equivalent of about $5 a day. And telecom magnate Carlos Slim, Mexico’s richest man, told a business conference that “what has to be done is to substantially increase people’s incomes.” He called for a larger, better-paid middle class to stimulate Mexico’s internal market. …

n this city, a petri dish of progressivism, a prevailing theory is that when you raise the price of something, people will buy less of it, except when they do not. A related theory is that constitutional and statutory texts should be construed in the spirit of Friedrich Nietzsche: There are no facts, only interpretations. The city council has voted to impose a tax, effective next year, on sugary soft drinks, raising the price of a 2-liter bottle of soda about $1.18. Presented as a public health measure to combat obesity, the tax is projected to generate about $15 million...

Oh, here we go with the minimum wage stuff again. And more proof that the $15/hour initiative really isn’t the end of the road. Frankly, Republicans should ask in response to these Democratic minimum wage proposals why can’t it be $40/hour or $100/hour? We all know that the $15/hour goal is a ruse and for Montigue Magruder, who is running for Virginia House of Delegates, he wants a $26.80 minimum wage (via Brandon Morse):(VIDEO-AT-LINK) He also wants to jack up the minimum wage to $26.80, a height that even Bernie Sanders hadn’t the stones to suggest to his followers. Magruder...

Media bias: once again, a news article about a financially struggling single mother trying to raise her children makes absolutely no mention of their father The Guardian recently published this article about a single mother who is having financial troubles as she tries to raise her two children on the salary that she gets from working at a fast food restaurant.As is always the case with articles like this, the article makes absolutely no mention of the children’s father. (I have written about this media irresponsibility before – see here and here.)In this particular case, the article refers to the woman...

A customer dining at D.C.’s Oceanaire restaurant noticed an unusual line at the bottom of his receipt: “Due to the rising costs of doing business in this location, including costs associated with higher minimum wage rates, a 3% surcharge has been added to your total bill.” Brian, who asked The Washington Post to use only his first name to avoid conflicts with his employer, was surprised to see the additional charge. He snapped a picture and sent it to local blog Popville, which posted a picture of his receipt. The outraged comments started rolling in. “Just raise prices if you...

Economics: Last year, the "Fight for $15" movement was said to have unstoppable momentum, driven by labor unions, left-wing politicians and a sympathetic press. Then reality struck. Too bad it didn't strike sooner. "This is a trend that cannot be stopped." "The political earth has shifted." "This movement continues to build." "Even economic experts who oppose the increased rate see it gaining momentum." That's what all the "experts" were saying last year. It was easy to make such assumptions. Protests and strikes were on the rise, hitting 340 last year. In 2015 alone, 14 cities and states approved $15 minimum...

The percentage of American full-time minimum-wage workers who can afford to rent a one-bedroom apartment in any U.S. state without being what the government calls "burdened" is so vanishingly small — less than one percent — that it rounds down to zero. That's the conclusion of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, a lobbying group that pushes for more low-income housing and also reports that no full-time minimum-wage worker can afford a two-bedroom apartment in any U.S. state. Researchers define "afford" by people's ability to pay 30 percent of their income or less on the cost of housing, which may...

Longtime nurse and union president, Cathy Glasson, is offering a clear vision of how bold, progressive policies can improve the lives of average Iowans. Glasson is exploring the run for governor in a swing state, which in 2016 voted in favor of Trump, but also Obama in 2008 and 2012. In the following Q&A, Glasson talks universal health care, raising the minimum wage, and how she can improve the life of the average Iowan. Q: Why are you considering a run for governor? I’m exploring a run for Governor because I’m tired of watching working people in this state get...

Democratic Party economists warehoused in academia between elections have spent decades denying that minimum wage increases cause unemployment. Unfortunately, they do. "At the Great Recession's bottom, African-American teens had an unemployment rate of nearly 50 percent while the rate for all teens was 27.1 percent," a column on the BET website notes. "In the weak post-Recession, many teens compete for jobs against down-sized adults with college degrees." "And economists William Even from Miami University and David Macpherson from Trinity University report that when a state, or the federal government, increases the minimum wage, Black teens are more likely to be...

Seattle, Washington, with its highest-in-the-nation minimum wage, has discovered how high is too high. In January 2016, Seattle’s minimum wage jumped to $13 an hour from $11 for large companies. New research released in late June by a team of economists at the University of Washington points to the wage hike having come at a significant cost to low wage employees: The increase led to steep declines in employment for low-wage workers and a drop in hours for those who kept their jobs. The slashing of jobs and hours resulted in, on average, $125 less per month because of the...

The Seattle Mayor’s office coordinated with a Cal Berkeley economist to manipulate a study on the effects of a $15 minimum wage for maximum political benefit, according to emails obtained by the Employment Policies Institute (EPI). A staffer for Democratic Mayor Ed Murray reached out to the Cal Berkeley economics department asking them to rush the release of a study, released in June, that cast a positive light on Seattle’s increased minimum wage ordinance. The Berkeley study’s findings contradicted those of a then forthcoming University of Washington (UW) study, which found that Seattle’s increased minimum wage had cost low-skill workers $179 per month and hurt employment numbers. Murray’s...

There they go again. Hillary Clinton was a two-time loser. Weirdly, her people are still in charge of the Democratic Party. Clintonista militant moderates haven't learned a thing from Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump -- so they're trying to sell Democratic voters on more of the same. Remember what happened when Clinton ran on the whole never mind your crappy low wage job, vote for me because first woman president bit? Now we're supposed to get excited about center-right California Senator Kamala Harris because she ticks off two boxes on the identity politics hit parade. Remember the ugly optics when...

Emails between the Seattle mayor's office and an economist at the University of California, Berkeley show that the mayor's staff tried to deliberately undermine a University of Washington study showing that the city's $15 minimum wage ordinance was harming the city's low-income workers. The emails show the staff went to great lengths to publicize the Berkeley economist's report and downplay the other report's findings. "Tomorrow's release will just highlight your study, correct (ie leave the critique of the UW study until later)? … Don't want your positive news to serve as a teaser for the UW study," wrote Carlo Caldirola-Davis,...

SEATTLE—The posters on display at the entrance to her Capitol Hill store say it all: “You are safe here.” “Black Lives Matter.” “Resist Trump: keep America great.” “I was raised on the most progressive politics,” says Jon (pronounced “Joan”) Milazzo, who co-owns Retrofit Home, a furniture shop on a busy corner of downtown Seattle. A native Vermonter who moved west about 30 years ago, Ms. Milazzo is all for the idea that employees – especially those at the bottom of the pay scale – receive a fair wage for their work. But she is straining to reconcile her principles with...

Restaurants in Seattle are showing an increase in hygiene violations as the minimum wage climbs. From the paper Minimum Wage and Restaurant Hygiene Violation: Evidence from Food Establishments in Seattle by Subir K. Chakrabarti, Srikant Devaraj and Pankaj C. Patel (my highlight):

The CEO of Apple-Metro Inc., a company that operates about 40 Applebee’s restaurants in the New York metropolitan area, said he’s been forced to cut at at least 1,000 servers in the past year as a result of New York’s recent minimum wage hike. “We have 1,000 less servers this time this year than we did this time last year,” Zane Tankel told Fox Business’ Stuart Varney on Monday. That amounts a two-thirds reduction of his total workforce, Tankel said. Tankel said the minimum wage increase has forced him to adopt a “concierge” type model of having servers help customers operate self-serve...

There are political movements to push the federal minimum hourly wage to $15. Raising the minimum wage has popular support among Americans. Their reasons include fighting poverty, preventing worker exploitation and providing a living wage. For the most part, the intentions behind the support for raising the minimum wage are decent. But when we evaluate public policy, the effect of the policy is far more important than intentions. So let's examine the effects of increases in minimum wages. The average wage for a cashier is around $10 an hour, about $21,000 a year. That's no great shakes, but it's an...