The clear and compelling case to raise the minimum wage
Published February 26, 2014
by Chris Fitzsimon, NC Policy Watch and NC SPIN panelist, February 25, 2014.
The U.S. Senate is likely to vote next month on legislation that would help 28 million workers across the country and 21 million children. The bill would benefit more than a million workers in North Carolina and add more than a billion dollars to the state’s economy. And the latest polling finds that 73 percent of the American people support it.
The legislation would increase the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour from the current $7.25 and restore some of buying power of the minimum wage that has massively eroded over the last couple of decades.
You would think that the fate of a proposal that would improve the lives of tens of millions of people and that has overwhelming support from voters would be a forgone conclusion, but these are not normal times in the policy and political world.
Common sense is a rare commodity. So too startlingly, is any sort of consensus that it makes sense to help people who are working hard every day and are still unable to take care of their families.
Most of the opponents of raising the minimum wage are waging an ideological battle, not making policy arguments. Many of them don’t believe that we should have any minimum wage at all, much less raise the woefully inadequate level of the current one.
They not only say the legislation to raise the wage is naпve and misguided, they call it immoral.
Apparently following their blind and holy devotion to their self-created myth of a free market is far more important than making it easier for single parents who work 40 hours a week to feed their kids.
The claims they trot out are as familiar by now as they are tiresome and wrong.
Their most common claim is that most of the people who would benefit from a minimum wage increase are teenagers, many of them in middle class families, who are working for more spending money not to meet basic needs.
The opponents of the increase really want to help the poor they tell us, but raising the minimum wage is not an effective way to do it.
But almost 90 percent of the workers who would benefit from an increase are 20 or older with an average age of 35. Fifty-six percent of the workers who would stand to gain are women and almost a third of workers affected have kids.
It is simply not true that an increase in the minimum wage would be an ineffective way to help the working poor.
And it’s worth noting that the same people and think tanks in North Carolina opposing the increase also supported ending the state Earned Income Tax Credit that helped 900,000 low wage workers in the state.
No matter how a policy helps people working in low-wage jobs, the ideologues on the Right seem to be reflexively against it.
The other most common argument from the Right against raising the minimum wage is that it will result in an overall loss of jobs and they point to a recent report from the Congressional Budget Office as proof.
But the majority of economic studies show little significant job loss from moderate increases in the minimum wage and a recent report from the Economic Policy Institute found that raising the wage would actually create as many 85,000 jobs because of the $22 billion increase in the GDP that would result.
And isn’t it interesting, as columnist Eugene Robinson pointed out recently, that the same folks now falling all over themselves to cite the CBO study on the minimum wage refused to believe the CBO study that showed the economic stimulus they so virulently opposed actually created 1.6 million jobs?
Maybe if they are against raising the minimum wage, they would support another public jobs creation bill. But that’s not their goal. It’s about ideology remember.
And even if the CBO is right about job loss, the minimum wage bill is still worth passing. Economist Jared Bernstein points out that even using the CBO’s high-end estimates of job loss, 98 percent of the people affected in some way by increasing the minimum wage will benefit from it.
Folks in Congress fretting about job loss could also take Robinson’s advice and work on a new stimulus plan or at least cancel the across-the-board sequestration budget cuts that the CBO says will result in the loss of 900,000 jobs.
The bottom line is that millions of Americans are getting up every day and working hard and are still unable to make ends meet.
Senators will have the chance to help them next month and they have a clear choice— holding a rigid ideological line or listening to the vast majority of voters and helping workers take care of their families.
Let’s hope they make the rational, common sense, and compassionate choice.
February 26, 2014 at 8:01 am
TP Wohlford says:
Just once I would love to read an article on this subject where the proponent shows some knowledge of the Law of Supply and Demand of Labor. Just once.
But do they require Econ 101 in most colleges now? Doesn't look like it.
February 26, 2014 at 9:03 am
Richard Bunce says:
The business owner (aka employer) who has put their capital at risk has a minimum wage of $0... or less. The employee's stake in the company is zero, they they can walk out at the end of the shift and never come back. This is all about political power... there are more voting employees than employers. Hard to believe the Democrats every lose an election.
February 27, 2014 at 11:17 am
Rip Arrowood says:
Let businesses who do not want to pay minimum wage set wages as they please - but they can't file for standard business deductions allowed by the Fed and State on taxes.
Those businesses who do pay a minimum wage would be allowed all standard deductions from the State and Fed IRS.
Let's see who the risk takers are then...
March 2, 2014 at 2:02 pm
Richard Bunce says:
Even better, no tax credits or deductions for any individual or business on Federal and State income taxes. Get the government out of picking the losers and bigger losers and return income taxes to their original purpose, raising revenue to fund essential government services and not government bureaucrats failed notions of social engineering.
However if you insist on ending just deductions on business paying less than some arbitrary minimum wage I suppose you do not just mean the deduction for employee wage expenses do you? So since you likely include eliminating all deductions I am sure you would agree to be fair to eliminate all government taxes and regulations upon the business as well.
March 3, 2014 at 10:51 am
Rip Arrowood says:
I would have guessed you would come back to protecting the businesses. I do believe the average working taxpayer realizes that paying taxes is part of the price one pays for living in a society.You seem to side with those who think they "built it" all by themselves...
March 3, 2014 at 11:31 am
Richard Bunce says:
These business owners do pay personal income taxes... what's your point? You want to punish employers... doesn't bode well for employees.
February 26, 2014 at 9:32 am
Norm Kelly says:
Just from the title it was easy to draw conclusions: this editorial was either from the N&D or Chris. Regardless of what the facts are, how negatively raising the minimum wage is for the majority of the nation, this headline obviously came from a socialist/lib/DemocRAT supporter. Maybe I'll be able to get through the whole thing.
How exactly does causing businesses to pay more to employees, causing the price of all products to go up, reducing employment of unskilled/low skilled/new workers add to the economy? Those same people who are now making more money by government interference will find that their new money doesn't go as far when it comes time to spend it. And some of the people who are expected to benefit from a higher minimum wage will find themselves either collecting unemployment instead, or in the case of many teens never getting the job in the first place.
Obamacancer was passed by the Demon party when it didn't have majority support from the voting public. Since Obamacancer has been implemented, it's support has eroded. So just because a number of people have been convinced by the libs everywhere that raising the minimum wage is a good thing doesn't mean it really is. After all, if polling results were used to make law, then Obamacancer wouldn't be law. Then again, neither would the state lottery. But the Demons forced that down our throats as well. How's the lottery working out for the state?
'Most of the opponents of raising the minimum wage are waging an ideological battle'. Then again, most of the proponents are waging an ideological battle also. Similar to school vouchers, or school budgets. Comes down to an ideological debate, not what's necessarily best for the population or the kids. How does raising the minimum wage $3 per hour benefit those people who will be terminated? How does raising the minimum wage $3/hour affect those people who will have to pay more for the goods and services they either choose to purchase or need to purchase? How does raising the minimum wage for those people affect me when I won't get an automatic $3/hr raise but will have the cost of my goods & services go up as well? How does MY budget accept & adjust to this increase in costs? Does Chris or any supporter of minimum wage increase answer this question? Nope.
'Apparently following their blind and holy devotion to their self-created myth' of socialism completely colors their attitude toward everything in life. This is a statement that Chris meant to denigrate people who believe in personal responsibility, free markets, smaller/less intrusive government. But what's obvious about the left is that socialism IS THEIR religion. They are blindly following the dictates of their holy religion. It does not matter to them what the arguments are against government intrusion into a market, or government take-over of a market, they will insist that it is for the 'good of the people' or it's 'for the children'. At which point the rest of us are supposed to bow down to that altar as well. Except that some of us have the ability to look around the world at all the places that socialism has been tried and draw a logical conclusion. Some of us have the ability to use the brains our God gave to us and conclude that socialism has failed every where, every time. Nothing has proven to be more successful to more people than freedom and free markets. There is no one I am aware of on the free market side who is claiming there should be NO regulation. But there are people on the left who are saying, much like Chris, that there is NO SUCH THING as too much government regulation and interference in markets. Many, like Chris, appear to believe that the more government regulation and interference in markets, the better 'everyone' will be. Show us where this has worked. I'll show you where freedom and free markets have worked. I can point to the US. Who can you point to?
Chris does make a good point. Many who currently earn the minimum wage are NOT teenagers. This is a relatively new phenomenon. It seems that it started about 5 years ago, when the Holy One was anointed. What's his name? Slips my mind sometimes. Oh, yeah. That's right. The Holy One is named Barack. Since he's been in office part time employment is becoming the norm. And when the stats came out from the CBO saying that Obamacancer would actually increase the number of part time employees, this White House's response was that this was a good thing. It would give people the CHOICE of whether they worked for a living or not. So it seems that it's libs promoting part time, minimum wage jobs. When this is what you expect to be the norm for the foreseeable future, it's something you have to make 'profitable' for those forced to take those part time/minimum wage jobs. But the alternative is for the central planners to get the he-l-l out of the way and let employers make full time jobs again. Let the minimum wage jobs go back to the teenagers. Then the minimum wage will actually be a meaningless number.
'economic studies show little significant job loss from moderate increases in the minimum wage'. Is this what Chris and libs call a 'moderate increase'? The minimum wage is to go from 7.25 to 10.10 and this is moderate!?! I believe this comes out to approximately a 40% increase. This is what libs call moderate? Holy Crap! I can't imagine what they would call excessive! And somehow every business in the country will simply absorb a 40% increase in the cost of labor, along with the additional costs of Obamacancer, without passing it on to customers? What a dream world these people live in.
I have to work for a living. For now. When I finally get on Obamacancer, I'll be able to decide if I want to any more. In the meantime, I no longer have time to read this drivel. Most of it is simply based on Chris's/the libs religious beliefs and not founded in reality. The lib arguments are so easily proven wrong, out of touch with reality, based solely on their religious beliefs, that it's not worth writing any more to make my point. I believe that people with at least average intelligence can see exactly what's wrong with Chris's arguments/statements. There is no need for me to preach to the choir, as the saying goes.
