This is grim news...more:Wage hikes always cause a spike in the unemployment rate, and this year, with the country in the middle of a recession, businesses are already struggling to make ends meet. The economy will continue to hemorrhage entry level jobs unless legislators stop this summer’s minimum wage hike from happening.
Economists are nearly unanimous in pointing out that unskilled workers bear the brunt of minimum wage hikes. According to a 2007 survey from the American Economic Association at the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, 73 percent of labor economists believe increases in the minimum wage will lead to employment losses, which will fall disproportionately on the least skilled workers.
Teens get hit especially hard by wage hikes. Research from the University of Georgia (2006) found that for every 10 percent increase in the minimum wage, teen employment at small businesses decreased between 4.6 to 9 percent. Last summer’s 12 percent minimum wage hike contributed to a 5 percent drop in teen employment and the losses continued this year. Since Congress began implementing the 2007 wage hike, over 480,000 teen jobs have disappeared across the country.
Ahh, to heck with it - Congress passed it, it must be good!
4 comments:
read "the jungle". without minimum wage, you get wage slavery. "absolute power corrupts absolutely"... if companies cant afford to pay a living wage, then it is not going to exist here. simple as that. but new firms will take their places. always have and always will.
clearly the economy needs to be completely restructured. and dragging our feet and trying to recreate a lost industrial economy is pointless. embrace the future, because it is coming whether we like it or not.
This is always the liberal bogeyman for minimum wage hikes...oooh, we'll end up like The Jungle. Upton Sinclair was an avowed Socialist! This is obviously the direction that people of your ilk want to take us.
No, the economy does not need to be completely restructured at all. Frankly, if Bush II had stayed out of it, there would have been some short term pain, but we would be climbing back out of the recession by now. All this meddling by Bush and subsequently Obama has done is prolong the misery. But, that's what Obama wants...it gets more people like Anonymous here to believe the lunacy that we need to "completely restructure." Maybe you guys can come up with one of those great 5-Year Plans that statists love so much!
Look at the facts - increase minimum wage and those at the margins are hurt the most. Some compassion!
cant make an omelete without breaking some eggs. and a total overhaul of the economy would be good for us downstream. W and O are sucking at the teat of the financial sector and it blows goats, to be sure... but raising the minimum wage is an excellent idea as well. that way any new firms to enter the marketplace are going to have to be able to compete at that level. see how that actually encourages innovation and fosters creativity in future economies? a higher min. wage may cause layoffs of people at blockbuster; this is irrelevant when Netflicks cretes billions of dollars in new wealth and pays its workers above that scale.
This is NOT a bad thing... use your imagination a bit more and I bet you will see it too. there is INVESTMENT opportunity here... just look for it!
Wow! And conservatives are always called "mean." My short order chef friend here wants to basically destroy opportunity for all entry level jobs. The thing you are missing is our economy does not operate in a vacuum. Those jobs and companies will go overseas.
Again with the crisis mentality - what was it Rahm Emmanuel said? "Never let a good crisis go to waist!" Yup - yell and scream that it's a crisis and that everything has to change...the agents of change, of course, take care of themselves along the way and we re-make the economy into a socialist paradise. It worked so well for the USSR, why not here?
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