Minor Thoughts from me to you

Egregious Minimum Wage Doubling

I’ve become a lot more progressive during the past year. I still think that raising the minimum wage is a bad idea. I don’t agree with everything in this piece, but I do agree with this bit about the minimum wage. If “we” want to support low income workers, I think we should do it through income supports, a negative income tax (the Earned Income Tax Credit), or something else that doesn’t pass the entire cost onto employers and businesses.

Biden Proposal Hijacks Recession for Liberal Wishlist

Brian Riedl, writing for The Dispatch.

Perhaps most egregious is a proposal to more than double the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour—including for employees who regularly receive additional tips, for which the current minimum wage is $2.13. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that even gradually raising the minimum wage to $15 by 2025 in a growing economy would likely kill 1.3 million jobs, and perhaps as many as 3.7 million. Imposing a drastic minimum wage increase on small businesses that are already struggling to stay afloat during a recession is especially absurd. Moreover, forcing restaurants, which are failing at record rates, to raise their own tipped minimum wage by 600 percent is economic malpractice. Perhaps high-cost cities like New York City and San Francisco can afford a much higher minimum wage, but other parts of America with lower incomes and prices will not be able to absorb this policy. It has no business in a relief package.

This entry was tagged. Economics Income Jobs Joe Biden Minimum Wage