Free Republic

At base, a "fair" wage is one that will attract people to do what you need them to do. It isn't $20, $30, $40, or $1, $3, or $10 an hour. It is the wage at which people think they are better off taking than not. There is no non-artificial minimum wage, and no absolute limit to the size of the wage either. The way wages should be set is through market mechanisms. Here in the United States, we even have an implicit minimum wage on top of the ones set by law: people have an alternative called the welfare...

Blue-collar workers have seen real wage growth of almost two percent in the first five months of President Donald Trump’s second term, the largest increase for any administration in nearly 60 years. The 1.7% pay bump is in stark contrast to negative growth under Joe Biden, according to new data from the US Department of the Treasury. Since Richard Nixon in 1969, Trump has been the only president to record positive growth for blue-collar workers in his first five months. He also achieved 1.3% in his first term.The recovery from a 1.7% decline recorded in Biden’s first five months, as...

Heraclitus once stated, “a man never steps into the same river twice,” which implies that both the river and the man are continuously changing. The United States, and we as its citizens, are also constantly changing, but change can be managed and directed towards improvement and away from chaos. Among the most important decisions facing us is that of illegal immigration and who is going to do our work. Over the past decade, several political luminaries such as Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Chuck Schumer, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have declared that we need illegal immigrants to do the work that Americans won’t...

Thanks to @POTUS’s pro-growth, America First policies, real wages for hourly workers are up nearly 2% in the first five months of @realDonaldTrump’s second term — the strongest growth in 60 years. No president has done that before — except President Trump in his first term. Hardworking Americans and Main Street businesses have never had a stronger ally in the @WhiteHouse .

Wages are on the rise thanks to the nearly 1 million illegal migrants who have taken advantage of the Trump administration’s self-deportation program, according to the nonpartisan research organization Center for Immigration Studies. CIS put the number of illegal immigrants coming into the U.S. under the Biden administration at a conservative 15.4 million. While the Trump administration has followed through on its promise of mass deportations, the self-deportation program implemented by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in February is “cheaper for taxpayers and arguably much more effective,” wrote CIS fellow in law and policy Andrew Arthur. “DHS can’t...

During an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent insisted President Donald Trump’s economic plan would be a net benefit to the U.S. economy. Among the positive impacts he offered were reindustrialization, a revitalized private sector and higher wages. Transcript as follows: WELKER: It’s great to have you back after a very big week. Let’s start with the market reaction to President Trump’s announcement of his tariffs. As I just laid out at the top of the program, the markets lost more than $6 trillion in value. Was this disruption always part of the plan,...

The owner of a popular waffle shop in West Seattle said she had no choice but to shut down her business after the city’s new minimum wage law went into effect on New Year’s Day — hiking hourly pay to $20.76. Bebop Waffle Shop, which was founded by a former New York City resident more than a decade ago, closed its doors for good on Monday. “I’ve cried every day,” Corina Luckenbach, the waffle shop owner, told Fox 13 TV. Luckenbach, who founded Bebop more than 10 years ago after relocating from New York to the Emerald City, said that...

,,,Mayfield's father gave up life as a struggling cowboy and opened the family's first Dairy Queen in the late 1940s. Now, the younger Mayfield is lauded as the "King of Queens" by the Austin-American Statesman. And the King is taking on the federal government, accusing the Department of Labor of overstepping its authority by unilaterally raising the minimum salary employees must be paid to be exempt from overtime pay.... Mayfield has been locked in a battle with the Department of Labor for the last two years, suing for the right to offer his managers the compensation packages he sees fit....

As East and Gulf Coast ports begin to operate as normal again, one of the country’s top entrepreneurs is weighing in on “the trouble” with union workers’ demands. “The trouble with East Coast ports is they’re very old, they’re very inefficient,” O’Leary Ventures Chairman and “Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary said on “Varney & Co.” Friday. “And when you start to compare them against other international ports like Singapore and the other Asian ports,” he continued, “we’re just not holding much up against them. And that’s very bad for productivity.” US dockworkers returned to work Friday morning after reaching a...

Bosses are quietly trying to reset worker pay levels, saying the era of overpaying for talent is over. Pay for many white-collar recruits shrank last year, and now wages for new hires in construction, manufacturing, food and other blue-collar sectors appear to be ebbing too, according to an analysis of millions of jobs posted on ZipRecruiter.com. Job seekers report seeing roles that once offered salaries between $175,000 and $200,000 a year ago now being advertised for tens of thousands of dollars less, a change that has had them rethinking their pay expectations. Companies are also moving job openings to lower-cost...

Fast-food restaurants survive by providing affordable, quick, and convenient meals, but cost inflation is now pushing their business models to the brink.It has become more expensive to eat out over the past five years, with food away from home increasing by 30 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In just the past year, the cost of eating at a fast-food restaurant has increased by more than that of a full-service restaurant.Within the consumer price index, the limited-service meals category (food that is ordered at a counter and taken to go) rose by 4.3 percent year over year in...

About 13,500 hotel workers across Boston, Honolulu, Providence and San Francisco will vote on whether to strike this week as they push for significant wage increases and protections against job cuts. Employees at leading chains including Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott and Omni will decide in the coming days whether to approve the walkouts... If workers vote to authorize a strike in the first four cities, one can be called at any time once their contract expires, with some already having expired, and others set to expire by the end of August.... Theresa Fiorino, a room service cashier at the Hilton Boston...

The soaring cost of living under Joe Biden is taking a toll on blue collar Hollywood, driving the labor unions that represent production crews to push for higher wage increase guarantees from the major studios. IATSE and the Teamsters — which both endorsed Biden in 2020 — are currently in the thick of contract negotiations with Hollywood studios as the industry continues to reel from dramatic budget reductions that have resulted in far fewer movie and TV shoots. Add to that the skyrocketing costs of consumer goods and services and you have a recipe for widespread financial misery in what...

Approximately 10,000 jobs have reportedly been slashed at California fast food eateries after the minimum wage was hiked to $20. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) law to pay workers $20 an hour went into effect on April 1 and has apparently taken a devastating toll on the industry, Fox Business reported Wednesday. The outlet continued: The California Business and Industrial Alliance (CABIA) said nearly 10,000 jobs have been cut across fast food restaurants since Newsom signed California Assembly Bill 1228 into law last year. To highlight what it says are the unintended consequences of the law, CABIA has taken out an...

Under Bidenomics and Fed monetary “policies”, we now have the wreck of the US middle class. To begin with, America’s paychecks are bigger than 40 years ago, but purchasing power of those larger paychecks is about the sames as it was 40 years ago. Great job Washington DC!!! … NOT!!!! Meanwhile, credit card delinquencies are at the highest level since 1991. Americans are feeling extreme financial stress. Coping with Bidennomics and The Fed has been most difficult. Especially if you listened to Biden’s D-Day speech (almost stolen word-for-word from a Ronald Reagan speech). Demented Joe Biden being led by the...

We are in an election year. President Biden, a seasoned politician, has failed miserably in tackling inflation and is now attempting to shift blame for "Bidenflation" onto Trump, a move even noted by The New York Times, which dubbed it Biden's Plan B. Commenting on the latest CPI release, President Biden said: We’re better situated than we were when we took office where we— inflation was skyrocketing. And we have a plan to deal with it, whereas the opposition — my opposition talks about two things. They just want to cut taxes for the wealthy and raise taxes on other...

Prices for burgers, fries and other fast food items have increased at various restaurant chains across California, according to a recent report. A New York Post investigation revealed that some fast food chains in the Los Angeles area raised prices on April 1, after new California statewide legislation went into effect Monday enforcing a $20 minimum wage for restaurants that have at least 60 locations nationwide, except those that make and sell their own bread. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the legislation, AB 1228, into law in September. In addition to the pay raises, it also establishes a "Fast Food Council,"...

Migration cuts wages, Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, said Tuesday as he announced plans to trim his unpopular migration inflows that have forced his nation backward. “Increasingly, more and more businesses are relying on temporary foreign workers in a way that is driving down wages in some sectors,” Trudeau told reporters on April 2 as he announced plans to slightly reduce his mass migration that has imposed much poverty and chaotic diversity on Canadians. He continued: So we want to get those numbers down. It’s a responsible approach to immigration that conntinues on our permanent [immigration] residents as we have,...

Lyft and Uber said they will cease operations in Minneapolis after the city’s council voted Thursday to override a mayoral veto and require that ride-hailing services increase driver wages to the equivalent of the local minimum wage of $15.57 an hour. Lyft called the ordinance “deeply flawed,” saying in a statement that it supports a minimum earning standard for drivers but not the one passed by the council. “It should be done in an honest way that keeps the service affordable for riders,” Lyft said. “This ordinance makes our operations unsustainable, and as a result, we are shutting down operations...

Silence is not golden. Particularly when it comes to a silent DEPRESSION. Talking is cheap, people follow like sheep. Particularly when are told by Biden, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and NY Times economic spinster Paul Krugman says its the best economy in decades. It isn’t. In fact, the US is in a silent depression. Typically, a recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. If we use 2 consecutive quarter of negative GDP growth, we are not in a recession. But …. Challenges include increasing part-time employment in recent months, declining household employment in three of the...