What is it with these people that they keep pushing this minimum-wage horse squeeze?
The latest is from Pennsylvania, where a leftist Democrat (but I repeat myself) state senator is introducing a bill to raise the minimum wage in the Keystone State to $20.
A new proposal in Pennsylvania would increase the minimum wage to $20 per hour, making it the highest in the country.
State Sen. Christine Tartaglione, a Democrat, introduced legislation Tuesday that would increase the state’s $7.25 minimum wage, which is on par with the federal mark, to $20 per hour.
“Tellingly, $7.24/hr is the very definition of a poverty-level wage for a childless adult under the Department of Health and Human Services’ Poverty Guidelines and is even further below the threshold when factoring in children,” Tartaglione said in her memo.
The Pennsylvania Commonwealth’s Department of Health and Human Services sets the poverty line at $7.24, one cent below the commonwealth’s minimum wage.
“Keeping people in poverty is not how we move the Commonwealth forward — our current wage is immoral and unjustifiable,” Tartaglione said.
So, why $20? Why not $50? Why not $200? Make it $500, then everyone in the state will be rich!
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Senator Tartaglione claims:
“The sad truth is that $15 an hour is no longer a living wage,” Tartaglione said.
If successful, wages would increase as soon as July 1. The District of Columbia has the highest minimum wage in the country at $17 an hour, with Washington state in a close second at $16.28 an hour.
How about reducing the costs of running a business in Pennsylvania? Of the 50 states, Pennsylvania ranks at #43 on the WalletHub ranking of the best and worst states to start a business; they rank 44th in business environment, 22nd in access to resources, and 38th in business costs. (Full disclosure: Our own Alaska comes in worse, at 48, but the cost of importing goods and materials up here has a lot to do with it – although we have minimum-wage stupidity here, too.)
Lower taxes. Reduce regulations. Make it easier to hire people. Stop messing about with the employment market.
It surely has occurred to this economically illiterate senator that more than doubling the state’s minimum wage would have a disparate impact on small businesses and much less of an impact on major corporations. And what do we know about small businesses? Well, they tend to be run by entrepreneurs, who tend to be independent-minded people who aren’t enamored of being dependent on a bunch of grifters in Harrisburg or of being the employee of a major corporation.
And if you wanted to hurt small businesses, you could hardly choose a better single issue with which to do so.
Here’s the onion, though: More than small business, it will hurt low-income workers. Why? Because the actual minimum wage is zero, this unrealistic wage floor will price relatively unskilled workers out of the market. That is the primary real effect of a high minimum wage because the only way any business, anywhere, will succeed is if their employees return value to the company in excess of their cost of employment. That’s how it works. It’s a law of economics and one that proponents of ever-increasing minimum wages just never seem to get.
The low-wage workers will always be replaced – with automation or by some other means. Or the businesses will simply shut down.
Do you want more burger-bots? Because that’s how you get more burger-bots.
