Posted on 02/26/2021 9:30:35 AM PST by USA Conservative
After the Senate parliamentarian ruled a minimum wage hike is not allowed in the COVID relief bill, Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) proposed a bill to require billion-dollar companies pay workers $15 an hour.
The requirement would apply to companies with revenues of $1 billion or more.
“For decades, the wages of everyday, working Americans have remained stagnant while monopoly corporations have consolidated industry after industry, securing record profits for CEOs and investment bankers,” said Hawley in a statement. “Mega-corporations can afford to pay their workers $15 an hour, and it’s long past time they do so, but this should not come at the expense of small businesses already struggling to make it.”
After 2025, the bill would require the minimum wage for the large companies to be indexed to the federal median wage.
The ruling that the minimum wage hike could not be passed through the reconciliation process — which Democrats are using to pass the relief bill without Republican support— was a setback for Democrats. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) said he strongly disagreed with the decision, but is working on a backup plan.
Sanders said he would continue to push for a $15 minimum wage by looking at ways to raise taxes on companies paying workers less than that.
“In the coming days, I will be working with my colleagues in the Senate to move forward with an amendment to take tax deductions away from large, profitable corporations that don’t pay workers at least $15 an hour and to provide small businesses with incentives they need to raise wages,” Sanders wrote in his statement. “That amendment must be included in this reconciliation bill.”
It’s not clear if the needed 50 senators would vote for the Hawley, Wyden or Sanders proposals.
Costco has already set a new minimum wage standard: $16 an hour.
That puts the warehouse-style retailer, which topped $4 billion in profit in 2020, ahead of rivals including Amazon, Target, and Best Buy.
Also this week Signet Jewelers (SIG), the world’s largest retailer of diamond jewelry, announced it’s raising its minimum wage for all U.S. employees to $15 per hour, to take effect by the spring of 2022.
Yahoo Finance and the Harris Poll recently found Americans overwhelmingly support raising the minimum wage.
This news might come as a relief to the small businesses in America.
Government-mandated shutdowns may have killed 50% of small businesses in America. The bankruptcies are just beginning.
Nearly a year since coronavirus-related shutdowns began affecting large swaths of the American economy, more businesses are filing for bankruptcy as Chapter 11 filings were up nearly 20 percent in 2020 compared with the previous year, court records show
And just to be clear, I don't trust the communist!
Apply it to all people manufacturing products we import, and I might support it.
Level the playing field.
Pay US workers the 6 figure Visa salaries our foreign labor is getting to come to the US to work for Microsoft, etc.
It won’t help local businesses compete for employees. Government interference is just that; interference. It interferes with free choice and can never substitute for the decision making of free people.
Walmart and Target already did away with cashiers. Who’s going to be left to pay the $15 to?
There are only 6 major media conglomerates, which they can control. They want to do the same to small business. Only large corporations can afford $15/hr.
When I drive by the local hamburger joint, I see a sign that states the starting pay is $15.00 an hour, signs at Home Depot say that stating pay is $15.00 an hour, I read that Target has increased starting pay to $15.00 an hour and that Costco is raising starting pay to $16.00 an hour.
Sounds like the free market is working and without government intervention.
If you’re going to use the size of a company as a proxy for ability to absorb costs, got should use profit, not revenue. Lots of companies move a lot of cash in a small margin.
Also,a two-tier system might actually hurt small business as talent drains to the big companies.
Bad idea. The government has no Constitutional right to meddle with wages in the marketplace. But the Uniparty - Communists have never seen a phrase in the Constitution that they were unwilling to violate.
The government does not have the right to set a minimum hourly rate of pay. No further discussion is needed.
“Only large corporations can afford $15/hr.”
Well then, people should quit their jobs with small business and get hired by Target, Lowe’s, Home Depot or Costco that does pay at least $15.00 and hour.
I wonder if they realize that "billion-dollar" companies have entire floors of accounting firms juggling their finances and that such companies have the resources and know-how to defer, redirect and otherwise manipulate their "revenues" if it saves them from this socialist scheme. Watch for a lot more $900-million companies as the "billion dollar" companies shrink or evaporate altogether.
“This might be painful for certain companies, but it will no doubt help local businesses compete. What do you think? Good idea?”
I think the opposite. I think big companies can automate and reduce their workforce. Small, local companies, already running lean, will be forced out of business.
Just how the fascists like it.
Why so low? Why not make the minimum wage $100/hour? GO BIG!! Why is it so mind boggling for people to understand that government interference of the “free market” is unnecessary?
The billion dollar companies will just raise prices to compensate for the new minimum wage. Companies don’t pay, consumers do.
Companies must pay workers more...
Companies aren’t paying their fair share in taxes...
One always follows the other. They’ll force higher wages, companies will cut their profits which also means cutting their taxes, which will then spur the demand for even higher taxes because all that money isn’t flowing into the treasury.
The floor cleaners are automated, the shelf stockers are being beta tested by using robots and many warehouse functions are automated.
This is the way of the world, but we will adapt.
Civilization has always been disrupted by major innovations, but we have always been able to adapt {in America}.
The farmers are now more productive than they have ever been so that food supplies are able to not only feed America, but many in other countries.
Medicine advances are incredible, the biggest failure in America is education {at all levels}.
The only schools that come close to American standards, are Christian {mostly Catholic} and some other private schools.
The reason is simple, no unions and teachers teach real subjects, not racial and gender bullshit.
This is pretty much the economic definition of Fascism.
“ Where socialism abolished money and prices, fascism controlled the monetary system and set all prices and wages politically. In doing all this, fascism denatured the marketplace.”. Source: Econlib.org
I don’t know if they are stupid, or if they just think we are stupid.
With all due respect USA Conservative, please consider the following.
Even if national minimum wage for rich companies turned out to be the greatest idea since sliced bread, it remains that the states have never expressly constitutionally given Congress the specific power to deal with INTRAstate labor issues, including setting a national minimum wage, post-17th Amendment ratification senators unsurprisingly pushing unconstitutional legislation on this issue.
From related threads…
Regarding so-called U.S. national minimum wage, patriots are reminded that, regardless of politically correct interpretations of Congress’s very limited Commerce Clause powers, the states have never expressly constitutionally given the feds the specific power to regulate labor wages, including minimum wage.
In fact, not only had 19th century, state sovereignty-respecting Supreme Court justices emphasized the already clear meaning of the Commerce Clause, but Justice Joseph Story had used “the wages of labor” as an example of a power that the Commerce Clause does not give to Congress.
"Article I, Section 8, Clause 3: To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;"
"State inspection laws, health laws, and laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c. are not within the power granted to Congress [emphases added].” —Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
"Agriculture, colonies, capital, machinery, the wages of labour, the profits of stock, the rents of land, the punctual performance of contracts, and the diffusion of knowledge would all be within the scope of the power; for all of them bear an intimate relation to commerce. The result would be, that the powers of congress would embrace the widest extent of legislative functions, to the utter demolition of all constitutional boundaries between the state and national governments [emphases added]." —"Justice Joseph Story, Commerce Clause (1.8.3), 1833.
”From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added].” —United States v. Butler, 1936.
Patriots who would appreciate a minimum wage please note that there is nothing stopping a given state from making its own minimum wage laws, ultimately depending on what the legal majority voting citizens of a given state want.
In fact, consider Justice Brandeis had volunteered his “laboratories of democracy” metaphor that each state was free to experiment with things like minimum wage (my words), depending on what the legal majority citizen voters of a given state want.
"It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose [emphasis added], serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.” —Justice Brandeis, Laboratories of democracy.
The bottom line is that many lawmakers of the desperate Democrat-controlled Congress need to lose their jobs under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment imo for repeatedly passing legislation based on constitutionally nonexistent federal government powers.
"14th Amendment, Section 3: No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same [emphasis added], or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability."
Additionally, politically correct federal departments that deal with INTRAstate labor issues need to be eliminated.
> Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) proposed a bill to require billion-dollar companies pay workers $15 an hour. <
Typical Democrat trying to tell companies how to operate. Oh, wait. Hawley is a Republican. So instead I’ll say: Typical DC politician trying to tell companies how to operate.
And tired&retired is correct in his post #2. Unless this scheme is also applied to imports, it will make domestic goods less competitive. The Chinese would love that.
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