No public policy issue – none! – gnashes the teeth and raises the hackles of those who know what it truly is more than the minimum wage
It is, as each year’s edition of Characteristics of minimum wage workers put out by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics points out, an entry- or beginning-level wage earned almost entirely by teens and very young adults. (My description from the data, not BLS’). By the way, minimum-wage earners account for just 1.1% of the nation’s workforce.
Furthermore, writes economist Jeffrey Dorfman in a Forbes article, Almost Everything You’ve Been Told About the Minimum Wage is False, “… minimum wage earners are not a uniformly poor and struggling group; many are teenagers from middle class families and many more are sharing the burden of providing for their families, not carrying the load all by themselves.”
Poverty? David Neumark, one of the nation’s foremost experts on the minimum wage, puts it succinctly “… evidence simply does not provide a strong case for using minimum wages to reduce poverty.”
Get ready for a cascade of ignorance to wash over Californians as campaigners for passage of Proposition 32 on the Nov. 5 General Election ballot shower us with the rhetoric of poverty, heroic struggle, and as the very name of the ballot measure itself indicates, “Living Wage,” whatever, in real life, that might be.
Poverty? David Neumark, one of the nation’s foremost experts on the minimum wage, puts it succinctly “… evidence simply does not provide a strong case for using minimum wages to reduce poverty.”
Get ready for a cascade of ignorance to wash over Californians as campaigners for passage of Proposition 32 on the Nov. 5 General Election ballot shower us with the rhetoric of poverty, heroic struggle, and as the very name of the ballot measure itself indicates, “Living Wage,” whatever, in real life, that might be.
As I argue in a news release put out by Kabateck Strategies client NFIB, one need look no further than California’s own backyard to see the tragic destruction left in the wake of recent minimum wage hikes upon various cities and specific industries, citing the fast-food and health-care industries and the City of West Hollywood as examples. Since the April 1 implementation of the $20 fast food minimum wage, the industry has laid off more than 9,500 men and women and raised prices by an average of eight percent and is rapidly switching to kiosks. The City of West Hollywood, already with the highest standard local minimum wage in the country at $19.07 per hour, has delayed yet another approved increase to $19.61 per hour from July 1 of this year to January 2025, citing the impact it would have on the city’s stressed budget. And Governor Newsom, who signed legislation allowing a $25 minimum wage on hospital campuses (including janitors, retail stores, restaurants and others who operate on those campuses) has delayed implementation to at least October of this year, citing the impact it would have on the state’s already deep-red budget. Wouldn’t it be nice if pro-minimum wage policymakers expressing buyer’s remorse for their own actions would sympathize with the stressed budgets of small business owners? The relief need not apply to anyone but themselves, it seems.
This one-page fact sheet put out by NFIB nicely encapsulates what the minimum wage is and is not and who earns it, and this one-page fact sheet discusses the minimum wage in California.
This one-page fact sheet put out by NFIB nicely encapsulates what the minimum wage is and is not and who earns it, and this one-page fact sheet discusses the minimum wage in California.