Posted on 06/06/2019 5:24:20 AM PDT by Kaslin
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., an advocate for a $15 minimum wage, returned to work as a bartender for one day. Ocasio-Cortez said: "All labor has dignity, and the way that we give labor dignity is by paying people the respect and the value that they are worth at minimum. We have to make one fair wage, and we have to raise the national minimum wage to $15 an hour, nothing less."
The issue is simple: Does a government-mandated minimum wage help or hurt the very workers and job seekers that Ocasio-Cortez wants to help?
Ask her former boss, who owned The Coffee Shop diner in Union Square where AOC used to work. Late last year, The Coffee Shop closed its doors after 28 years, sidelining 150 employees. How successful was the place, where diners often came to celebrate special occasions? About the Coffee Shop, Forbes wrote last year: "For nearly 30 years, serving those many occasions has added up to enormous success. According to Restaurant Business magazine's 2017 ranking of the 100 highest-grossing independent restaurants in the U.S., Coffee Shop served 314,000 meals and pulled in an estimated $14.3 million in sales, good enough to land in the 79th spot on the list. Coffee Shop stands out as one of few non-steakhouses (there are 24, mostly in New York and Las Vegas) or bottle-service meccas (the Tao Group has five on the list) to crack the top 100, and to do so consistently for nearly two decades."
But co-owner Charles Milite citied higher rent and the increased minimum wage as the reasons for the closure. New York's minimum wage law would have added $46,000 a month to his labor costs in 2019. Milite said: "I know it doesn't sound like much -- $2 an hour. But when you multiply it by 40 hours, by 130 people, it becomes a big number. It was going to increase our monthly payroll $46,000."
New York City's minimum wage for businesses with 11 or more employees had gone from $11 in 2017 to $13 in 2018. And then it increased to $15 in 2019. Milite said: "It's a wakeup call for our industry in general. When a restaurant is one of the top-ranked restaurants in America, sales-wise, and can no longer afford to operate, you have to look at that and say there's a shifting paradigm in the business."
Proponents of raising the minimum wage argue that it actually stimulates employment. To make that case, they turn to a famous study known as the Card-Krueger study. The study, cited by Democratic politicians such as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, supposedly demonstrated that when New Jersey hiked its minimum wage, there was either no effect or a small (SET ITAL) positive (END ITAL) effect on employment at fast-food restaurants relative to the adjacent state of Pennsylvania, which did not raise its minimum wage. These results stood the bulk of economic research about the minimum wage on its head.
But there were numerous problems with the study, not least of which is that it covered only an 11-month period, starting two months before the minimum wage increased. Initially, fast-food employers in New Jersey raised prices and saw little to no adverse impact. But medium-term and long-term, other researchers found a lessening of economic activity as a result of the minimum wage, relative to Pennsylvania.
The other problem is that Card-Krueger just asked employers whether they hired people. Other researchers, attempting to replicate the results of Card-Krueger, examined actual payroll records. These researchers found that, contrary to what employers told Card-Krueger, hiring and hours fell off relative the hiring and hours of those in Pennsylvania. Diana Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist of the U.S. Department of Labor, wrote: "Card and Krueger do not include information on the portion of employment at minimum wage at any date in time. No information was given on whether the minimum law was binding, and to what extent, for this sample. The studies did not include information by county, such as income, unemployment, teen unemployment, labor force, and labor-force-participation rates. Neither did it include changes in state taxes and franchise fees."
Then there is the December 2014 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research, called "The Minimum Wage and the Great Recession: Evidence of Effects on the Employment and Income Trajectories of Low-Skilled Workers." The results confirmed the consensus among economists: Minimum wage laws do harm. It concludes: "We find that binding minimum wage increases had significant, negative effects on the employment and income growth of targeted workers. Lost income reflects contributions from employment declines, increased probabilities of working without pay (i.e., an "internship" effect), and lost wage growth associated with reductions in experience accumulation. ... We estimate that these minimum wage increases reduced the national employment-to-population ratio by 0.7 percentage point."
In short, fewer workers get hired, new hiring gets deferred or not done at all, or current workers work fewer hours -- just as traditional economics 101 tells us. Or we could simply ask AOC's ex-boss.
“Proponents of raising the minimum wage argue that it actually stimulates employment. To make that case, they turn to a famous study known as the Card-Krueger study. The study, cited by Democratic politicians such as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama...”
I think I see the problem. Here we have a sh*t study being cited by two of the most talented political liars that this country has produced.
The new minimum wage for those who get laid-off due to wages set by government fiat, is ZERO.
Amazon employs over 6,000 workers in the state, according to the report that looked at data from August 2017. In that month alone, 700 workers received benefits, meaning that one in every 10 of those locals were beneficiaries of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The report revealed that Amazon warehouses also receive significant state and local subsidies.
"The state and local tax incentives Amazon receives doesn't include the tens of thousands of dollars its Ohio workers need each month in food benefits," Zach Schiller, a research director at Policy Matters Ohio, said in a release on January 5.
"When you consider that, the subsidies are even larger," Schiller said.
Over the next 4 years New Jersey will approximately double its minimum wage to $15. Think about the absolute economic devastation that is going to occur when wages double for a myriad of jobs for which that much the pay is insupportable. This artificially high minimum wage will rout countless small businesses and make many services unaffordable.
Of course the real plan is to eliminate jobs. How can we ever repatriate work from countries that already pay a fraction of American wages, when we make sure that our wages are so high the companies will never return here. The real plan is to replace these workers with the illegals.
I would argue that the point of increasing the minimum wage is to induce wage inflation that causes an increase in all wages.
The wage inflation will result in increasing the price of everything all across the board.
Once there is general inflation, Democrats can hide all sorts of stuff, including the higher price of insurance for Obama care.
These are the same pseudo-intellectual ideas that ignore the fact completely that labor is subject to supply and demand like any other commodity. There’s a reason low skilled wages and wages generally are low. Illegal aliens, and government monetary policy - inflating the currency.
Yes, stupid overseas adventures are part of that.
Open borders, tens of millions of illegal aliens drive wages down.
Way, way down. The minimum wage for entry level jobs would probably be $20 to $30 an hour without them, and no legislation, and no earnest well meaning but loopy hypehenated “advocates” required. Funny, that.
Government policies, it’s as if a representative shows up, you’re minding your own business, and he breaks your kneecap and then hands you a crutch and says “Aren’t you glad I came along?”
If we had a real press in this country. Oh well.
People believe what they want to hear.
Nobody is going to win any arguments with her with facts.
Not for a long, long time. Wages are at about 50% of where they should be.
To be honest I can not blame business owners
I am absolutely for the minimum wage. Congressman should be paid the minimum and no more. Even $15 is excessive for someone of AOC’s skill set. I think it was the “Peter principle” that said people naturally rise to the level of their own incompetence. AOC was a natural bartender.
In the last week or so, a couple of really grubby, loser looking leftists have set up a fight for 15 petition table by our local grocery store. I’ve watched people walking into the store stop and just sign. No conversations, no questions. Just signing and moving on. These dudes asked me to sign and I laughed loudly and walked away. Of course they got snarky. Didn’t want to engage them as I was a woman alone and generally avoid potentially dangerous people.
Makes any real American want to cry.
The whole Democrat worldview seems to boil down to shouting “Care more, m****rf***er!” while sticking a gun in your face.
AOC graduated from the ‘Tanya Harding School for Rules of Order’
It’s a required curriculum for people too stupid to resolve a problem or answer a question based on an actual command of facts.
We all have news for AOC. Wages are driven by supply and demand. If the minimum increases, everything increases.
My 15 year old son has been working, from home, as a part time software developer for a company since March. He is making $25/hr. He is allowed to work as much as 25 hours per week - flexible depending on his sports/school schedule.
That wasn’t driven by a law. That was driven by supply, demand, and ability.
It’s also smoking-your-socks idiocy to suggest that a low skilled, entry level job “should” pay enough to support a family. That isn’t how this works, that’s not how any of this stuff works.
A huge percentage of the problems today is our people have been force-fed nonsense for so long, and deprived of real education, that they simply don’t have a clue on basic stuff, stuff that everyone used to take for granted. People like her don’t get traction except in a kind of vacuum.
Crap. Thanks. Didn’t notice that it was yuge.
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