Posted on 06/04/2014 10:32:01 AM PDT by Objective Scrutator
Hippie infestation.
Seattle’s city council on Monday unanimously approved an increase in the city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, making it the nation’s highest by far.The increase was formally proposed by Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, and his spokesman said he intends to sign the ordinance on Tuesday.
Apparently unaware that it doesn’t have the weather advantages that other places pricing themselves out of existence do (Los Angeles, anyone?), Seattle seems to be ready to set a record for how many businesses it can ruin.
The earnest idiots who whip up this minimum wage frenzy always use big corporations in their examples. It’s usually along the lines of, “The CEO of McDonald’s makes millions while the burger flipper struggles and that is wrong BECAUSE FAIRNESS.” No discussion of the fact that an entry level, part time job isn’t supposed to be your adult income wage for life.
What they don’t discuss is just how stifling this progressive feel good, math-hating nonsense is to current and aspiring small business owners.
Because they want to drive as many people as they can into financial hell.
This has little to do with helping anybody. It is driven by hatred, envy, jealousy and bitterness toward “rich” “greedy” business men, the productive, achievers. They do not care that it will hurt low-skill workers. They want to stick it to the man.
When will people learn that when you increase the incomes of low-skilled workers it only serves to increase inflation and thus they very same people that the increased minimum wage was supposed to benefit see not economic prosperity.
Instead, wages on for low-skilled workers should be decreased in order to allow increased income to stock holders and executives who can put that money back into circulation without causing inflation.
I absolutely agree. Occupy Wall Street is an excellent example of this hatred in action; many of those liberals had belongings, yet they were willing to give them all up just so they could try to murder wealthy people. (I have suspicions that they did commit some murders, though of course the LameStream Media would never admit that.)
The ‘moonbats’ here in Seattle will just have to learn but probably won’t because many have high paying jobs at Amazon or Microsoft. We will just see more aggressive panhandlers and homeless on street corners and freeway on and off ramps. I’m sure all those illegal aliens will be storming up here to take their jobs with less pay.
What’s missing from the discussion is that no government has the right to set a minimum or maximum wage.
While I would expect that many small businesses who employ minimum wage workers will be soon issuing pink slips to all but their most productive and more customer self service, there are some unintended consequences. These may include minimum wage workers who manage to keep their jobs seeing smaller paychecks due to higher taxes and those currently getting government benefits like Medicaid, food stamps, free meals for their kids at school etc. may now be no longer eligible for those programs. This plan will backfire big time.
Their own suburb of SeaTac should have warned them
It raises the question of whether they should be allowed to consume air...
Yeah! Some their report no more free meals, free parking, lost 401K, med/dental.
According to the moonbat socialist member of the city council, franchise owners are rich.
So if you run a 24 hour small newsstand (like I use to do) and you don’t want to work 24 hours a day, you have to pay someone to work the other 12 hours at $15 an hour for 8 hours then time and a half for the remaining 4 hours which equals $210 total, so just to pay for him you would have to make in profit $8.75 an hour over 24 hours which during the night can be all you make if anything at all. So you know what I would do? I would only be open 12 hours a day and guess what? I am not hiring an extra person. So yes yes I can see how this would create jobs, perfectly logical.
In the short term, lots of businesses will fire anyone they can “surplus”, and prices will really jump. Job perquisites will disappear. But then the fun really begins. The average rent will increase to consume the entire “raise”, oblivious to increases in other prices.
Rent, in particular, finds its market level at about half the net income of workers. It is spontaneous inflation, not based on supply, but on net income.
This is what I posted on the other Seattle $25.00/hr thread:
“Well, it turns out the workers in SeaTac, WA are not happy with the $15.00 minimum wage.
“See http://shiftwa.org/sea-tac-workers-not-happy-with-15-min-wage/ for the story.
“And in my previous post, I should have been more specific: the $15.00/hr minimum wage was passed by the voters in SeaTac, WA.
“SEATAC airport does not have to abide by the $15.00 minimum wage, by court order.
“If you “Google” SEATAC minimum wage and read some of the articles that pop up, you’ll see just how much class warfare and class envy permeate the LIEberal minds in that area.”
“What’s missing from the discussion is that no government has the right to set a minimum or maximum wage.”
What’s also missing is that no government has the right to erase the borders of the United States. And yet they’ve done it.
Open borders forces American minimum wage workers to compete with 3rd World worker for jobs. Your job, and the job of most FR posters, is safe — newspaper editors and politicians and firefighters and teachers aren’t threatened. No foreigner is going to offer to do the work for less and take your job. So what do you care if the local motel operator wants to pay maids a buck less a day? Because the South Americans will work for that.
Only the least among us — burger flippers, hotel maids, and car washers — are subject to this race-to-the-bottom, black market labor extortion. Open borders inevitably drive down American wages in formerly American industries. Try hiring an American dry-waller.
Big Business is a collaborator. Try getting that job as a hotel maid. Foreigners only need apply. They don’t “make trouble.” (Read: demand minimum wage and rest breaks.)
Americans with the fewest skills are getting pounded in the labor market, because their own government has failed them by not stopping the endless supply of surplus labor — and everyone is mad at them for looking for a way to push back.
Minimum wage legislation is a desperate response to a desperate situation.
Addendum: I should have also said that if there weren’t 30 million illegal workers in this country taking jobs from Americans, I would be totally opposed to minimum wage laws.
But they’re here and there’s no will to do anything about it. So the unskilled labor market isn’t free — it’s gamed to favor non-Americans. And I’m all about protecting Americans as much as possible under the shameful, desperate circumstances. What else can be done, besides minimum wage legislation?
There is a minimum wage in America. It’s a lot higher than $15 an hour. And when a business doesn’t meet it, the taxpayers do... through welfare, subsidized housing, Obamacare, Medicare, and so on.
I’m sick of all these business owners crying how there’s no-one to hire. There’s 30 million unemployed and underemployed Americans, and they want to truck in illegals by the tens of millions. What they mean is that they can’t find someone willing to work for the ludicrously low wages they want to pay.
If your business can’t stay afloat paying $15 an hour when your competitors also have to pay $15 an hour, you don’t have what it takes, and if you want to destroy America and force me to pay for your workers, screw you.
Am I being harsh to small businesses? No. Large businesses bring the cost of recruitment and hiring way down by dealing in bulk. They can afford to keep cycling through an endless stream of employees working for a few weeks or a few months at a time. The HR costs are less than the costs of paying someone more. The small businesses who monkey that behavior screw themselves over. Ever wonder why no-one in customer service learns English? Why? They’re going to get the same $7 an hour.
Employees used to represent an investment, and employers used to do all they could to grow that investment.
Now, they just hire two illegal immigrants at $7 an hour, or $10,920 a year. And us taxpayers pay them each $50,000 a year in welfare benefits, housing, etc. And another $20,000 for each of their kids for public schools, healthcare, etc. So the $11,000 a year job costs US taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars.
That’s exactly what it is, it forces business owners to hire illegals or not hire anyone at all.
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