The Truth About Minimum Wage Republicans, both nationalists and conservatives, have been crowing about the recent failure of the minimum wage increase in Seattle. While it is always nice for our world view to be validated I feel this article is necessary so that we will not be misunderstood. After all Democrats are always eager to paint conservatives as the tools of big business even while they passed Dodd-Frank which concentrated 43% of the banking industry in 4 banks and Obamacare which doubled the profits of the insurance industry at the cost of rising premiums and deductibles for the middle class. Republicans, like everyone else, do want wages to go up. We just believe that raising the minimum wage particularly the federal minimum wage is the wrong way to go about it. Democrats Before I give our view I will debunk the points made by Democrats first. Whenever any policies are discussed the left will always bring up Denmark, Norway, and Sweden as their perfect utopias. Ask them point-blank if these countries have a federal minimum wage. As small as these countries are they have realized that a nationwide minimum wage might be apt for one location but would not work for another. In the context of the US a federal minimum wage designed for New York would price rural businesses out of the market but a minimum designed for rural areas would not be livable in New York. This is why these countries have minimum wage negotiated per industry instead of for the entire country. Arbitrarily raising the minimum wage does not work either. A variant of that was tried in Venezuela in Petroleos de Venezuela, their national oil company. You may recall that just prior to their crisis they were also hailed as a model socialist country that the US should follow. Venezuela eventually nationalized the oil company. When they did they hired more people and increased their wages. The problem was they did not produce more oil nor did they sell it at a higher price. You just had more people doing the same amount of work at higher wages. This was not a problem while oil prices were high. When they bottomed out this became part of the reason we see the chaos we do in Venezuela today. Incidentally this is also why Trump is dangerous to Putin. More production by the US of oil and natural gas could cause a glut in the market which would cause worldwide prices to drop and ruin the Russian economy. Republicans As Republicans we do believe in the free market. Even nationalists believe in a free market just one bound within the nation. Labor like anything else is a commodity and follows the rules of supply and demand. When the supply of available labor is high then the price is low. In addition when the demand for available labor is high then the price for labor will increase as well. We believe that instead of setting random numbers as the minimum wage the government should instead set policies that will help lower supply of labor and increase demand for it. This way the change to wages will be organic and something the companies themselves would have to do in order to get the best of the available labor. We think this will be safer as in leaner times companies will not be forced out or forced into bankruptcy by wage levels it can no longer afford. On a related note this is why the people don't believe the Democrats and media when they tell them we are at full employment. If we are at full employment wages are supposed to go up but they are stagnant. The Trump administration is doing things that we believe are necessary to change this. The best example is addressing illegal immigration. The slave labor provided by illegals and those provided by those with work visas such as H1-b increase the amount of labor in the pool. With more labor available potential employees have less power to bargain for higher wages. Removing regulations and providing tax reform also increases the amount of businesses in the US increasing the demand for labor therefore making each individual worker more negotiating power. To sum everything up Democrats believe in legislating wage increases no matter what conditions on the ground dictate while Republicans believe in creating conditions necessary for the wages to increase.
I find it rather funny that you would mention H1-B visas in a rant against minimum wage. As those who come here on H1-B visas are highly qualified professionals, thus making considerably more than than minimum wage. Your bull poop commentary seems to miss the point the the greatest economic and employment growth are occurring in Democratically held areas while poverty seems to be Republican controlled areas' middle name. The main difference being that while conservatives are waiting around for some rich guy to give them a job, liberals, like myself, have been out creating our own jobs.
That sounds fine in theory, but what about the fact big business make millions, if not billions, every year, while there are people in the U.S living at or below the poverty line? The reason we have a minimum wage is because firms have a responsibility to ensure that their workers earn enough to live on. The minimum wage is about fairness, the value of work, and the opportunities that work provides. Seven years of federal inaction have allowed rising inflation to eat away at the buying power of the minimum wage. Moreover, the last three years have seen a slack labor market that has produced stagnant wages and incomes for the middle class, while the income of big businesses have risen dramatically! No employer should be allowed to unreasonably profit by exploiting the lack of negotiating power of low-wage workers! http://www.epi.org/publication/issuebrief201/ May I remind you that the Great Recession was a consequence of removing regulations on Wall Street? Some regulations are necessary in order to protect the middle class. And while I agree we need tax reform, most of the time these reforms don't help the middle class and instead give a big tax break to the rich, who don't need more money lining their pockets.
theoretically its because the businessess can hire h1b and illegals so the workers dont have bargaining power. Remove those and the workers can because the businesses have to hire someone. Also i already pointed out there how your anti-bank regulation ended up concentrating half the banking industry in 4 banks. Too big to fail lol.
How much do they pay you to post this garbage ? I agree that an increase in min. wage will make no difference at all. The reason is, because anyone running a business where it makes a difference, McDonald, etc. will just pass on the cost to consumer, plus, give themselves yet ANOTHER raise out of spite. Wages have been Stagnant since 1984 AND the great Tax Scam against the poor. Equal % for all sounds great in Theory. While Wall Street Bankers and guys like yourself feed off of the rich, regular workers, Factory (what is left) Plumbers, Electricians, Restaurant Managers, and so on have been held below 50K a year going back that far. If you graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1986 you could expect to make 50K a year, today, it is still close to that... Now, if you are a friend of an exec at coca cola you can expect to make 250K and 5M within 5 years. The guy that tries to work his way up thru the corp. is grounded in 95% of the cases. He will rarely move to over 100K The guy that became an electrician at 21 and is still doing it 30 years later has lost tons of ground vs inflation. It is a joke and this admin. is continuing on the same path, Obama didn't help either. It is no longer republican vs Dem. but rich vs poor... Just going to take time for the DUMB poor to catch on, if ever... Gotta love the way Trump brings in workers for mar a lago...
His argument is the same one Bush Cheney passed along. THey all have enough money now to bury all the poor, thus, no sense in arguing what we know is the truth. Their main goal is to convince the real dumb that they care about the worker. That is where they are spending money.
Something that most democrats who not understand is that even at $15.00 an hour, most Americans will be far under a living wage. In New York City, the average cost of living for a single adult living alone would require a wage of $15.50, this is using MIT's living wage calculator, which is based on the average cost of essential needs...housing, food, healthcare, childcare, etc.... A living wage for a family of 5 with one working parent and one stay at home parent is well over $33.50. A single parent with 3 kids would need $48.16 See? Countless families would be left far below the cost of living. What we need to do is instead of having a singular one-size-fits-all umbrella minimum wage, is have each state set their own minimum wage based on the average cost of living in their jurisdictions. Cost of living is determined by the department of labor's office of wage statistics.
