What is the real minimum wage?
Some of you might respond by saying “It depends on which state are you talking about”. But you would be wrong.
The real minimum wage is the same in every state. It is $0 an hour.
And that is what someone earns when he or she is out of work.
With that in mind, here are the first three paragraphs of Andy Puzder’s article in yesterday’s Orange County (California) Register. I think they make my point pretty clearly:
California recently became the first state to enact a $15 minimum wage, and the business community is stunned. Not by unions pursuing such an increase. They had a $15 initiative on the ballot this November in any event. Rather, the surprise was that California’s lawmakers were so anxious to avoid a popular vote on a measure that significantly reduces opportunities for working class Californians, the very individuals it was supposed to benefit.
In December, The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco released a paper examining the current research on the impact of minimum wage increases. It stressed that the “most important” policy consideration was whether there would be “fewer jobs for the least skilled workers” because “they are the ones the minimum wage is intended to help.” It found that the “most credible” research showed minimum wage increases resulting in “job losses” for these workers and “with possibly larger adverse effects than earlier research suggested.”
In January of this year, Gov. Jerry Brown agreed, stating that raising “the minimum wage too much” would put “a lot of poor people out of work.” His conclusion: “There won’t be a lot of jobs.”
Isn’t that great? A $15 minimum wage is shutting out not just kids looking for part-time or summer work (who will pay them this much?), but workers who, for whatever reason, are at the entry level.
And if the government has made employment difficult-to-impossible for entry level people who want to work, what do you figure they’ll do?
They’ll go on public assistance, that’s what. Because public assistance gets them money they cannot earn themselves.
And what does that do to our economy? The burden on our dwindling number of actual taxpayers? The likelihood that people of means will move their primary residence out of California…as California businesses are doing?
My congratulations, therefore, to Governor Jerry Brown and his likeminded legislators. You are managing to transform what used to be a very desirable state into a repository for poor people with little or no ability to support themselves, not even at the most nominal levels, while heavily incenting the individuals and companies whose taxes must support these people to leave.
Who said politicians can’t be effective?
