#NCSEN: The N&O goes off the rails on the minimum wage
It sure didn’t take long for The miserably-failing Raleigh branch of the McClatchy empire to return to form as propagandameister for all things left-of-center. The N&O has released an unsigned editorial laying down a mop-up bombardment on Thom Tillis regarding the minimum wage. I know, I know. I’m doing yeoman’s work reading this wretched end-product of the low-T, soap-watching, Prius-driving crowd on McDowell Street so you don’t have to. (Speaking of — Mr. Drescher, where’s your pet shih-tzu? Haven’t seen his byline in a while.)
Okay, take a deep breath. Here we go:
[…] Hagan also has a comeback for Tillis’ tired old claims that raising the minimum wage would force layoffs and cost those low-paid workers their jobs. “It (a higher wage) really gives people more funds to spend to buy, and to help grow those small businesses,” she said. Yes, and businesses have to have a certain number of workers to get their goods made or distributed. To say that forcing them to raise pay a little for some workers would result in big layoffs is little more than wishful Republican thinking. Businesses would cope with a wage hike, as they have in the past.
Indeed, holding the wage at a level set in 2009 is an unfair subsidy to employers. […]
Wow. Letting business people keep more of their money is an “unfair subsidy”? How is letting someone keep their own money a subsidy?
These people and their senator are so utterly misinformed — so profoundly stupid. A mandate requiring an increased minimum wage increases the cost of doing business. People go into business for the purpose of making as much money as possible. If the government forces a business to spend more money on something that does not expand the business or lead to increased profits, profits are reduced. Investors have to be paid somehow. So, prices go up. Worker hours get cut. Fewer jobs are created.
Wage levels need to be set by the market. They are determined by the cost of living in an area and what people are willing to work for. That’s one reason why stuff costs more in Boston than it does in Boone.
This kind of class warfare demagoguery is utterly despicable. The last thing we really need in this horrid economy is to slap one more weight on top of business people struggling to make ends meet so some corrupt politician can score a few more points in the polls and a few more years at the public trough.
What happened to the free market ? In some businesses if you pay a salary instead of hourly some individuals make less than the hourly worker but they have perks the hourly worker is not privy to. Go figure. Let the free market make the decision not the government entities.
Keeping the minimum wage as low as it is forces the middle class to subsidize large corporations (hello WalMart & McDonalds) paying starvation wages to employees. Most of those employees require various types of Federal assistance to live (when they are “working for a living”) which comes from middle class tax payers.
Such jobs are for unskilled workers – there’s no reason to offer a higher wage because employers can literally hire any number of equally unskilled people to do that same job at a lower wage.
If workers want to earn higher wages, they probably need to use their minimum wage job experience to develop more marketable skills that employers will value and pay a premium for.
And if you’re trying to raise a family on a minimum wage job, you’re probably already doing a lot of things entirely wrong – that’s not what those jobs are for.
So you are in favor of American taxpayers subsidizing Wal Mart, McDonalds, etc. by providing assistance to people who work hard 40 hours or more a week?
How “hard” people work is irrelevant – wages arent based on just that.
“Working hard” may end up getting you more opportunity, more responsibility, and ultimately, more skill, so that you become more valuable to an employer, and more valuable employers with more skills earn higher wages.
If Wal-Mart of McDonalds can find 50 people with the same zero level of unskilled labor – then what people are willing to agree to work for is the wage I’m good with them paying. That’s how markets work, and labor is simply a market.
That wage being “enough” to support the lifestyle that worker chooses or desires, is, for the most part, not Wal-Mart’s or McDonald’s responsibility or concern.
So, in short… sure. We certainly have a problem with too many people who have low-to-non-existent marketable job skills, at points in their lives where they’re trying to live and work and raise families, as if they did have more demand-able skills to bring to the table. Unfortunately, at the moment, it’s the American taxpayers that have those skills and pay those taxes that end up supporting and “subsidizing” all those people. 🙁
“…”return” to form”??? I must have missed a post or something, I’ll read back some… I was unaware they had ever left that attitude 🙂
” “It (a higher wage) really gives people more funds to spend to buy, and to help grow those small businesses,” she said. ”
lol, that’s hilarious…. as silly as that old claim about Henry Ford increasing wages so his employees could buy more cars. *sigh*
I dont see how that math adds up, and that’s just a nonsense argument for several, already well-established reasons. Like many typical pro-minimum wage people, she’s mis-characterizing the basic arguments so her absurd notions sound coherent to the infamous low-info voter (and there’s a lot of those out there, sadly – many of them still reading the N&O).
Unfortunately, Tillis seems OK with a minimum wage in principle – his distinction of federal vs state control is to me, not an important distinction. It’s just a bad idea – period.
I was trying to be nice (I’m in that kinda mood today)- but truly… “profoundly stupid” sums it up well 🙂
” I know, I know. I’m doing yeoman’s work reading this wretched end-product of the low-T, soap-watching, Prius-driving crowd on McDowell Street so you don’t have to.”
Also – yes you are, and thank you very much for that. 🙂
*tips cap
Always the hypocrite. When Hagan voted to raise the NC minimum wage in 2006, she voted for a wage which was $1.35 less than the minimum wage in Boston.
Obviously she understood the market in NC would not support the Boston wage. However today, she chooses to distort any explanation of this concept into an argument of punishing the people of NC.