dtucker300 Loc: Vista, CA

Here is a perfect example of why a federally mandated minimum wage law is counterproductive. There are so many factors involved: Right to work, the dignity of a persons work, the value of their work, illegal immigration undercutting wages, the entrepreneur's risk, investment expense, tax rates in various states, first jobs for young people, meaningful work for young persons, part-time v. full-time work.

When I was young I had a paper route at age 12, I worked in a restaurant at age 15, I mowed lawns on weekends, etc.. Many of these opportunities are not available to the young. I say this because the first job a person has is important in so many ways. It teaches them economic lessons, how to work with others, commitment and responsibility to the success of a business. It helps prepare them for other jobs which pay better. I bought my first car with the money I saved as a young teen. Fast food restaurants have become full-time jobs that used to be filled with teenagers working part-time.

Where have we gone wrong?



https://amac.us/aoc-returns-to-the-scene-of-the-minimum-wage-crime/?campaign=daily-news-email

AOC Returns to the Scene of the Minimum Wage Crime
Posted Friday, June 7, 2019 | By Outside Contributor | 13 Comments

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., an advocate for a $15 minimum wage, returned to work as a bartender for one day.

Ocasio-Cortez said: “All labor has dignity, and the way that we give labor dignity is by paying people the respect and the value that they are worth at minimum. We have to make one fair wage, and we have to raise the national minimum wage to $15 an hour, nothing less.”

The issue is simple: Does a government-mandated minimum wage help or hurt the very workers and job seekers that Ocasio-Cortez wants to help?

Ask her former boss, who owned The Coffee Shop diner in Union Square where AOC used to work. Late last year, The Coffee Shop closed its doors after 28 years, sidelining 150 employees. How successful was the place, where diners often came to celebrate special occasions?

About the Coffee Shop, Forbes wrote last year: “For nearly 30 years, serving those many occasions has added up to enormous success. According to Restaurant Business magazine’s 2017 ranking of the 100 highest-grossing independent restaurants in the U.S., Coffee Shop served 314,000 meals and pulled in an estimated $14.3 million in sales, good enough to land in the 79th spot on the list. Coffee Shop stands out as one of few non-steakhouses (there are 24, mostly in New York and Las Vegas) or bottle-service meccas (the Tao Group has five on the list) to crack the top 100, and to do so consistently for nearly two decades.”

But co-owner Charles Milite citied higher rent and the increased minimum wage as the reasons for the closure. New York’s minimum wage law would have added tens of thousands a month to his labor costs in 2019.

Milite said: “I know it doesn’t sound like much — $2 an hour. But when you multiply it by 40 hours, by 130 people, it becomes a big number. It was going to increase our monthly payroll $46,000.”

New York City’s minimum wage for businesses with 11 or more employees had gone from $11 in 2017 to $13 in 2018. And then it increased to $15 in 2019. Milite said: “It’s a wakeup call for our industry in general. When a restaurant is one of the top-ranked restaurants in America, sales-wise, and can no longer afford to operate, you have to look at that and say there’s a shifting paradigm in the business.”

Proponents of raising the minimum wage argue that it actually stimulates employment. To make that case, they turn to a famous study known as the Card-Krueger study.

The study, cited by Democratic politicians such as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, supposedly demonstrated that when New Jersey hiked its minimum wage, there was either no effect or a small positive effect on employment at fast-food restaurants relative to the adjacent state of Pennsylvania, which did not raise its minimum wage. These results stood the bulk of economic research about the minimum wage on its head.

But there were numerous problems with the study, not least of which is that it covered only an 11-month period, starting two months before the minimum wage increased. Initially, fast-food employers in New Jersey raised prices and saw little to no adverse impact. But medium-term and long-term, other researchers found a lessening of economic activity as a result of the minimum wage, relative to Pennsylvania.

The other problem is that Card-Krueger just asked employers whether they hired people. Other researchers, attempting to replicate the results of Card-Krueger, examined actual payroll records. These researchers found that, contrary to what employers told Card-Krueger, hiring and hours fell off relative to the hiring and hours of those in Pennsylvania.

Diana Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist of the U.S. Department of Labor, wrote: “Card and Krueger do not include information on the portion of employment at minimum wage at any date in time. No information was given on whether the minimum law was binding, and to what extent, for this sample. The studies did not include information by county, such as income, unemployment, teen unemployment, labor force, and labor-force-participation rates. Neither did it include changes in state taxes and franchise fees.”

Then there is the December 2014 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research, called “The Minimum Wage and the Great Recession: Evidence of Effects on the Employment and Income Trajectories of Low-Skilled Workers.” The results confirmed the consensus among economists: Minimum wage laws do harm.

It concludes: “We find that binding minimum wage increases had significant, negative effects on the employment and income growth of targeted workers. Lost income reflects contributions from employment declines, increased probabilities of working without pay (i.e., an “internship” effect), and lost wage growth associated with reductions in experience accumulation. … We estimate that these minimum wage increases reduced the national employment-to-population ratio by 0.7 percentage point.”

In short, fewer workers get hired, new hiring gets deferred or not done at all, or current workers work fewer hours — just as traditional economics 101 tells us. Or we could simply ask AOC’s ex-boss.

Reprinted with permission from - The Epoch Times - by Larry Elder

peg w

Remember in the 1950,'s someone could work at Sears and support a family of 4.

Lonewolf

We should be talking liveing wage which could be diferent depending on cost of liveing ware the job was. How good of employee do you have if they live in their car, how good do their kids do in school liveing in a car.
When the economy changed so both parents had to work and the kids got left to raise themselves is when things began going downhill in this country.
We used to have families now we have people liveing together all staring at their phones.
What's ruining our country is greed

Big dog

👍$$$$$

solarkin

I think it goes much deeper than greed.
I kinda think we are on an evolutionary roller coaster here. Human behavior ,in many cases makes no sense whatsoever .Just look at Congress ,for example.
If the complete lack of sense has any reason to be so prevalent,the only explanation could be genetic . The deadliest monsters faced by the human race are the ones we have created .
It's a symptom. of something going jinky in our dna.
Humans,are suffering at the hands of other humans ,and many ,so very many seem unable to change.

Lonewolf

Big dog

Way back when, one village would wipe out another. Then one tribe would wipe out another. That was when the world was Big. One part of the world didn’t effect another. But now, the world is small, and what happens anywhere effects everyone everywhere. Whether it’s in our DNA or just the nature of the beast, who’s to say ???

Lonewolf

Larry the Legend Loc: Not hiding in Milton

Indeed. So what changed? What's different now that didn't apply back then?

waltmoreno

What’s changed is that capitalism has replaced the old way of becoming wealthy. Whereas before the wealth was acquired by taking it from your neighbor. Dog eat dog. The biggest bully ended up being the wealthiest.
With capitalism you become wealthy by pleasing your neighbor. Which is difficult to do when the government tells you how much you need to pay your employees. As AOC’s former coffee shop employer found out. They had to close their doors. Sad.

Larry the Legend Loc: Not hiding in Milton

So what happened was government intervention in a free market, and not in a good way. That's pretty messed up. So how do we fix it?

waltmoreno

How do we fix it? Easy. Get the government the hell out of the free market. It's said to be mandatory in such things like anti trust stuff. But minimum wage - no way! A person's wages should be determined by what they bring to the company. No more no less. Even unions have outlived their usefulness. Especially public service unions which should outlawed.
Another word about public service unions. Public service unions have 2 parties present during negotiations: the union reps and the governing body reps. Whether these are council members, supervisors, whatever. Except that the governing body is spending taxpayers' money during these negotiations. And sadly the taxpayers who end up paying bloated pensions of the union members, or salary increases, or medical benefits or whatever else they demand, have no say during these negotiations. That's why public union pensions are off the charts. And that's the main reason states like Calif are really broke.

Larry the Legend Loc: Not hiding in Milton

Congratulations, you understand something not one in a hundred Americans can grasp. Government intervention in a free market is always a negative influence. Always.

dtucker300 Loc: Vista, CA

AOC was an economics major. She should understand this. But NO! She doesn't even know who Milton Friedman is, as is the case with many recent graduates with degrees in economics. What are they teaching these students? Leftist indoctrination!

Larry the Legend Loc: Not hiding in Milton

I can't answer that. I do know what they're not teaching them: To think for themselves, to apply reason and logic to a given problem or situation, to break large problems down into more easily solvable component parts, things like that. Of course, the material must be there before the seamstress can create the jacket...