THEY DON’T CALL HIM ‘GOVERNOR MOONBEAM’ FOR NUTHIN’
Billboard directed at similar legislation in New York. Ad included caption “Who needs an education or hard work when Gov. Cuomo is raising the minimum wage to 15 dollars an hour?”
“Economically, minimum wages may not make sense”, California’s Governor Jerry Brown said as he signed a bill requiring employers in that state to pay workers, regardless of skills, experience, employment longevity, or any other traditional qualification, $15 an hour.
But they make sense, he said, ” morally, socially, and politically.”
Actually, for Jerry and many of today’s Democrats, the operative term is “politically”.
The evidence has always shown overwhelmingly that, in fact, however well-intentioned, a government-mandated minimum wage doesn’t make sense “morally” or “socially”.
As a result, businesses fail, jobs are lost, wages and salaries and prices of goods and services throughout the economy rise proportionately and the minimum wage worker, who still has a job, is no better off.
Better for California and its low-skilled and those entering the world of work for the first time, if Governor “Moonbeam’ had instead gone with just a slightly modified version of the first part of his statement and resisted the cynical special interest pressures to take this action: “Economically, minimum wages… (do) … not make sense.”
More reading about the likely impact of California’s action:
From Reason.com: Heaven Help California’s Non-Urban Cities Under a $15 Minimum Wage Lessons in how to make double-digit unemployment permanent.
From The Wall Street Journal: The evidence is piling up that higher minimum wages kill jobs
From Independent Women’s Forum: U.C. study: minimum wage hikes drive low-level workers out
From Patriot Post: CA’s Minimum Wage Hike Will Harm the Poor
DLH
