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Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Obama's Minimum Wage Boost Will Result In Even More Job Losses

In the aftermath of the crushing humiliation from two weeks ago when the bipartisan (if perpetually wrong) Congressional Budget Office found  that Obamacare would result in an additional 2.5 million job losses  over the next decade, all else equal, one would think that the administration would, and should, do everything to make sure that the CBO is sufficiently incentivized, monetarily if need be (wink wink) to avoid such embarrassing incidents of truthiness in the future. One would not think that Obama would turn the other cheek and eagerly anticipate yet another roundhouse punch to the face just days later. Yet that is precisely what happened.

Minutes ago, the CBO issued another stunner of a report, looking at the impact of the minimum wage boost proposal from $7.25 to $10.10 (which at least when it comes to Federal workers is nothing more than a populist gimmick since as we showed previously the average Federal worker makes nearly twice as much as the average American. The punchline: while income would be boosted for about 16.5 million workers or a grand amount of about $31 billion, "the income of most workers who became jobless would fall substantially, and the share of low-wage workers who were employed would probably fall slightly." And the cherry on top: as much as an additional 1 million jobs would be lost by the end of 2016.

All in a day's work for central-planning.

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