 |
|
|
Adam not only flew, he flew to space. He was - with one thought he would be on the moon.
-- Benny Hinn, Praise The Lord, December 26, 1991
|
|
| |
News: The Immorality of the Minimum Wage
Posted on Tuesday, January 30 @ 12:41:57 PST by John Evans |
|
by Doug Bandow
The Democratic juggernaut has slowed. The House has approved a minimum wage increase as part of the "100 hours" agenda. But a filibuster has blocked a vote in the Senate. Of course, Republicans there are not going to stop the hike. Instead, they are demanding a minor concession -- some tax breaks for small business. An amended bill will almost certainly pass, though Democrats are still pressing for "clean" legislation.
The minimum wage has proved to be a popular bandwagon, with scores of House Republicans joining Democrats in voting to raise the rate from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour. Even the White House has signed on, so long as Congress distributes a few tax goodies to Republican-leaning small businessmen. Alas, the minimum wage has not become better policy because of the new GOP embrace.
The usual arguments on behalf of the minimum wage are simply wrong. Rarely do workers support families on the minimum wage. Columnist Mona Charen points to Labor Department data that more than four in five minimum wage recipients have no dependents. Most are second or third earners in a family, not heads of households. Just 1.2 percent hold full-time jobs. Most are below age 25 and almost half of their families earn above $60,000 a year.
Instead of helping those most in need, the minimum wage prevents the most disadvantaged from getting a foot on the ladder of economic success. If you raise the cost of hiring workers, fewer will be hired. If you raise the salary that must be paid, employers will reject those with the least skills, education, and training.
Click here to read the entire article
|
| |
|
|
Average Score: 4.5
Votes: 2
 |
|
|
^^Go to Top -  E-mail to Friend -  Print -  View PDF -  Subscribe -  Comments RSS
Re: The Immorality of the Minimum Wage (Score: 1)
 by Islamaphobe on Tuesday, January 30 @ 14:43:50 PST
(User Info | Send a Message) | | Doug Bandow, who was for years with the libertarian think tank Cato Institute, is a Christian commentator on politics and economics for whom I have enormous respect. I especially like his pointing out that many of members of Congress who support this legislation know perfectly well that it does not accomplish what is claimed for it. Here we have an outstanding example of how emotion and gibberish all-too-often triumph over facts and commonsense. |
[ To reply to this, please login or register ]
- by JL on Tuesday, January 30 @ 15:41:53 PST
- by Islamaphobe on Tuesday, January 30 @ 16:46:06 PST
- by tom-g on Tuesday, January 30 @ 19:46:43 PST
Stats -- US Dept of Labor (Score: 1)
 by Windpressor (Giddi_one) on Wednesday, January 31 @ 02:49:25 PST
(User Info | Send a Message) | **************
From the Labor Department site --
=============
Characteristics of Minimum Wage Workers: 2005
"According to Current Population Survey estimates for 2005, 75.6 million American workers were paid at hourly rates, representing 60.1 percent of all wage and salary workers.(1) Of those paid by the hour, 479,000 were reported as earning exactly $5.15, the prevailing Federal minimum wage. Another 1.4 million were reported as earning wages below the minimum.(2) Together, these 1.9 million workers with wages at or below the minimum made up 2.5 percent of all hourly-paid workers. ..."
...[a number of bullet points here and beneath the one quoted below]
...
*"The industry with the highest proportion of workers with reported hourly wages at or below $5.15 was leisure and hospitality (about 14 percent). About three-fifths of all workers paid at or below the Federal minimum wage were employed in this industry, primarily in the food services and drinking places component. For many of these workers, tips and commissions supplement the hourly wages received. (See table 5.)"
...
...
(2)Footnote --
"It should be noted that the presence of a sizable number of workers with reported wages below the minimum does not necessarily indicate violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act, as there are exemptions to the minimum wage provisions of the law. Indeed, the relatively large number of workers with reported wages below the minimum in 2005 includes about 300,000 hourly-paid workers reported as earning exactly $5.00 per hour; to some extent, this may reflect rounding in the responses of survey participants. The estimates of the numbers of minimum and subminimum wage workers presented in the accompanying tables pertain to workers paid at hourly rates; salaried and other non-hourly workers are excluded. As such, the actual number of workers with earnings at or below the prevailing minimum is undoubtedly understated.[REALLY?? :)] Research has shown that a relatively smaller number and share of salaried workers and others not paid by the hour have earnings that, when translated into hourly rates, are at or below the minimum wage. However, BLS does not routinely estimate hourly earnings for non-hourly workers because of data concerns that arise in producing these estimates. For further information, see Steven Haugen and Earl Mellor, "Estimating the number of minimum wage workers," Monthly Labor Review, January 1990 (PDF 415K)."
(emphasis added)
==============
Tell me again who, how many, of what % is going to need wage increases??
G1
........................
|
[ To reply to this, please login or register ]
| 
|
