Minimum wage legislation primarily affects minimum wage workers: teenagers, especially black teenagers. Raising the minimum wage kills jobs. It wipes out the bottom rungs in the ladder of success.
Minimum wage legislation is usually described as “raising the minimum wage.” However, upon examination what it literally does is to outlaw certain jobs. Jobs paying a certain wage were legal; now they are not.
In practice, some minimum wage workers do get a bump up in salary. They were going to get it anyway if they kept working. Now they get it sooner. However, hiring plans for the next year are revised downward. The uptick in wages is visible, but the reduction in hiring, though real, is not seen as connected to the legislation. That employment goes down in response to higher wages is simply the Law of Demand.
Another application of the Law of Demand is to unions. They use thug tactics to force higher wages. But higher wages mean less employment. The history of the UAW and the big three automakers illustrate the ways one can reduce employment of over-priced workers: subcontract, automate, lose market share, go bankrupt.”
Liberal policies kill employment. These include raising the minimum wage and supporting unions, discussed above, and also almost all “environmental” policies. These policies happen to be detrimental to the employment environment.
Liberals never seem to grasp the basic economic facts.
When the government demands you pay a wage of $9 an hour it leaves no employment opportunities for those who are worth only $7 an hour to the business.