One of the policy priorities fielded by Maryland’s progressive-dominated legislature is a plan to raise the statewide minimum wage to $15/hour in the next few years. It is a radical plan that would strip all exemptions out of law and require this standard of every employer from Hagerstown to Waldorf and from Havre de Grace to Ocean City.
The proposed law has already been criticized from several angles—there are the arguments made by professional economists that higher minimum wages effectively outlaw low-margin profitability, the moral case that this law would criminalize mutually beneficial behavior between consenting Marylanders, and the observation that this scheme comes directly from the Baltimore Mayor’s office out of concern that a higher minimum wage in the city would cause people and businesses to leave Baltimore, but that a statewide law would get the job done. Apparently, the idea that most Marylanders could want to leave the state is just unthinkable.
But I’d like to talk about one angle in particular: this experiment would eliminate any exemption for teenagers. This seems to betray the entire professed rationale for the minimum wage. We often hear activists compare their next minimum wage explained as a “livable wage,” alongside figures about monthly rent and food. They ask us how anyone can be expected to live on less than that.
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ReplyDeleteMinimum wage should be set to the same amount as Congress is paid.
That way we could all retire as millionaires.
And since we'd all be operating on an equal footing we could concentrate on genuinely tackling the issues that really matter.
My suggestion is tongue in cheek, of course, but to highlight the silliness of legislators trying to mandate the value of what any individual's contribution to their employer's organization is.
If they were just being silly but without hurting employees or employers that would be one thing. The facts have been in forever; each increase results in higher costs and fewer employees or employee hours. Why do you have to pour your own drinks at McD's? Order from a device? Scan your purchases at WallyWorld or the BigBox? Thank the minimum wage jockeys for putting you to work, without benefit of a paycheck, from the stores you patronize.
Tired of the rhetoric. The minimum wage is going to go up to match inflation and if you don't want to pay it then close your business down and make way for the competition that will.
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