Free Republic

Cierra Brown is trying to do all she can on her own, but it rarely feels like she’s doing enough. Cierra Brown estimates her commute to work would only take about 25 minutes if she had a car. That’s part of the reason she returned to McDonald’s in January: Her car had broken down and she needed money. But at McDonald’s, Brown only earns $9.50 per hour as a cashier, which barely helps cover rent and is far from enough to solve her vehicular woes. Without a car, one of Brown’s main headaches is getting to work. Her typical bus...

A $15 minimum wage has already destroyed hundreds of small businesses and many more jobs in cities like New York and San Francisco, and – as interest grows within state and local governments – it now threatens the livelihoods of millions of workers nationwide. New research by my colleagues and me at the American Consumer Institute examines four major labor market policies – minimum wage hikes, predictive scheduling, mandatory paid leave and joint-employer regulations – and finds these labor regulations will lead to four million fewer jobs. The study estimates that half of these job losses will result as more...

Under pressure from activists, Target announced in September 2017 that it would hike wages for all 323,000 employees to at least $15 per hour by 2020. This was a major victory for the "Fight for $15" movement—a win that was supposed to have repercussions for retail and fast food workers everywhere. "Our momentum is unstoppable," a Minneapolis Fight for $15 organizer told Common Dreams. Two years later, the story is pretty different. "I got that dollar raise but I'm getting $200 less in my paycheck," a Target employee named Heather told CNN. Heather's hours have been cut from about 40...

The dozens of former and current Target employees interviewed said that less hours have made it difficult or even impossible for them to pay their bills or get health insurance. “I got that dollar raise but I’m getting $200 less in my paycheck,” said Heather, a employee whose hours were cut from full-time to 20 hours per week. “I have no idea how I’m going to pay rent or buy food.” Target employees become eligible for health insurance if they average over 30 hours a week. However, a number of employees who were working more than that say they have...

Last December, the final phase of increasing the minimum wage in New York City to $15 per hour went into effect. (Well, at least the last stage for now.) It was considered a huge victory for the Fight for 15 crowd and, presumably, a big win for workers, particularly in the foodservice industry. So how has that been working out since then? As the New York Post reported this weekend, the law of unintended consequences has come roaring into play. They feature the story of one taco and tequila joint on the upper west side that’s been doing a thriving...

Personal-injury lawyer John Morgan has spent millions in a push to get a $15 per hour minimum wage measure on the ballot in Florida. Amid concerns working class pay has not kept pace with costs of living, seven states and Washington, D.C., have voted to boost their minimum wages to $15 per hour. John Morgan has gathered the 766,200 signatures needed to let voters decide whether to raise the wage next year. Now, the Orlando-based personal injury attorney waits on the state Supreme Court to decide if it appears on the ballot. Morgan, who runs a firm employing more than...

As predicted, the $15 minimum wage is forcing city employers to cut staff, shorten or scrap shifts, hike prices, cancel expansion plans and even close locations. The mandate took effect Jan. 1 for city businesses with 11 or more employees — and will hit even the smallest businesses come Dec. 31. Employers say they’re struggling to adjust to the whopping wage boost and making major shifts in plans. Yes, lefty and union-backed economists released a report last week claiming a local restaurant-jobs boom. But the city’s Independent Budget Office put the 2018 drop at 6,000 jobs, or about 3.4 percent....

Hypocrite labor unions are exempt from the very same local minimum wage laws that they helped to pass Labor unions are responsible for passing local minimum wage laws in cities all over the U.S.But in many of these cities, unions are exempt from the very same minimum wage laws that they helped to pass.According to this article from the Washington Examiner, hypocrite unions are exempt from the local minimum wage laws in Chicago, Illinois, SeaTac, Washington, and Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, as well as the California cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Long Beach, San Jose, Richmond, and Oakland.Why would unions support...

Let’s be clear: Mayor Peter Buttigieg’s off-color remark equating minimum wage opposition to being an oppressor of the poor isn’t just ignorant. It ignores elementary school economics. Politicians like to look at the minimum wage debate and only talk about the worker. For Democrats, this is a household talking point designed to earn votes. But it’s lacking reality. You can’t analyze only a third of the equation and expect to produce a winning formula. Creating jobs is a process that involves entrepreneurs, workers and consumers. All three of these items dictate the worth of an employee, not just what the...

BY ADELE PETERS Los Angeles county, where the minimum wage is currently $14.25 an hour, studies suggest that Uber and Lyft drivers often make far less. In El Monte, an industrial city east of Los Angeles, the city council just unanimously voted to change that, telling city officials to begin drafting a law that would guarantee drivers a minimum of $30 an hour. While other cities have set minimum wages for ride-hail drivers, this would be the highest in the country, and it comes after pressure from the Mobile Workers Alliance, a project from the Service Employees International Union, Local...

The lede from this Wall Street Journal article says it all: "More than six months after the $15 minimum wage went into effect in New York City, business leaders and owners say the increased labor costs have forced them to cut staff, eliminate work shifts and raise prices."Duh.Sarah McNally, owner of McNally Jackson Books, says, "There’s absolutely no benefit to being a retail business in New York." The unions, the conniving politicians, the anti-capitalist activists who were the driving force behind the "Fight for 15" movement have done a great job. They have all benefited while the workers and businesses...

Ben & Jerry’s co-founders announced a limited edition ice cream on Friday in support of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and his presidential bid. Ben Cohen, a co-founder of the Vermont-based ice cream giant, announced the new political flavor in a tweet Friday morning. He said Sanders is “the best candidate to beat Trump and drive the transformational change that we need to create a country that works for working families”:

The Democratic debates tonight and tomorrow will likely stick to the familiar script from the first ones, with candidates tripping over each other to see who can promise the biggest tax-spend-and-regulate agenda. This doesn't make for compelling television. President Trump nailed the description of the first round with his one-word tweet, "BORING!" To make the debates more exciting to watch and to provide voters with a glimpse of reality into Democrats' fantasy-world policy proposals, the CNN moderators must press the candidates on the consequences of their proposals. A good place to start is by challenging their uniform support of the...

Show me where Bread Line Bernard Sanders has voluntarily implemented "democratic socialism" into his own life. You can't, because he hasn't. Ever. Politics is sales. Why should any of us buy what Sanders is selling if he himself won't buy what he's selling? Sanders wants businesses to pay $15.00 per hour to their employees, but some of his own campaign staff earn less than that due to the number of weekly hours they work. Now some of those employees are demanding they be paid what Sanders wants to force upon all business-owners. Sanders has responded by limiting the number of...

Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign was just disrupted by campaign workers demanding the same $15 per hour that Sanders demands the government force all employers to pay. It serves him right. Years ago, the activist group ACORN faced the same problem. After fighting for a higher minimum wage, it tried to convince a judge it should be granted an exception when paying its own workers, since it was involved in such important and productive work. Government telling employers what to pay people creates nasty side effects. Five years ago, Seattle won fame by becoming the first American city to mandate...

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) called for a $20 federal minimum wage less than a week after the House of Representatives voted to raise the wage to $15 over the next six years. She seems to think these low-wage jobs should pay enough to support a family of four. Tlaib doesn’t understand the concept of jobs meant to be second jobs, employment for youth, money for extras. It is pay for what the job is worth. She is incredibly ignorant of basic economics and doesn’t seem to realize she would kill far too many jobs and too many businesses. Tlaib...

RUSH: Bernie Sanders. “Bernie Sanders defends how little he’s paying his campaign staff after complaints that they’re not even being paid what his presidential campaign says that people should be paid.” Bernie Sanders is not paying his campaign staff the $15 minimum wage that he is advocating. So Crazy Bernie “defended the pay package on Friday after the Washington Post story highlighted the fact” that Bernie’s being a little bit of a hypocrite, and then Bernie expressed frustration that his employees took their complaints to the media! He said (impression), “It does bother me that people are going outside the...

Via the Free Beacon. I told you she’s the Ringo of the group, did I not?Two things about this. First, I think it probably does fairly represent Tlaib’s and the Squad’s approach to policy generally, which is really just to take whatever the current progressive conventional wisdom is and super-size it. Progressives want softer borders? F*** that. AOC’s ready to get rid of borders. Progressives want to return to the Paris Accord? F*** that. The Squad is prepared to reorganize America’s economy to fight climate change.Progressives want a $15 minimum wage? F*** that. Ringo will give you $20. And...

Congrats on finally becoming a capitalist, Bernie.If you missed Ed’s post on Friday about Team Bernie’s crash course in real-world economics, read it now for background. The campaign’s field organizers realized they’ve been working an average of 60 hours a week at a rate of $36,000 per year, which shakes out to a bit less than $15 per hour — the magic number Bernie himself has demanded be set as the new federal minimum wage. He can’t pay us less than what he wants every American to be paid, his staffers rightly reasoned. So they’ve complained to management and...

Democrat presidential candidate Bernie Sanders announced this weekend he will cut staffers' hours so that they can effectively be paid a $15-an-hour minimum wage, prompting mockery from critics who say the move is more evidence that Sanders' plan to raise the national minimum wage is hypocritical and would only lead to less work and more unemployment. The Washington Post first reported last Thursday that Sanders' field staffers were upset that Sanders championed a $15 minimum wage on the campaign trail, and made headlines for railing against major corporations who pay "starvation wages" -- even as his own employees made "poverty...