by Jonathan Davis
To conservatives and liberty-minded Americans, the concept of using government to force private business owners to pay their workers a certain wage is anti-capitalist, anti-free market, and authoritarian.
Of all the historical documents dating back to the country’s founding, there is nothing indicating our framers believed that governments — on any level — should have that kind of power.
Private citizens who come up with a concept, idea, or product on their own and then invest their own money in realizing their vision should be free to decide what the value of their employees as well as the amount they can afford to pay workers — not voters, not functionaries, and not political leaders.
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It should then be up to individual Americans to decide if what a company pays is ‘enough’ for them. But after the ‘progressive’ FDR managed to impose the nation’s first federal minimum wage — in 1933, as the Great Depression ravaged the country (and businesses) — leftists have been using the power of government to force private industry to pay often unaffordable wages to their workers.
Today’s left-wing Democratic Party is following in those footsteps, demanding that private companies pay their employees $15 per hour whether the employer can afford it or not and whether the job is worth that kind of money.
And, as in the past, the measure, if passed, will do far more harm than good, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, as President Joe Biden has proposed, would cost 1.4 million jobs over the next four years while lifting 900,000 people out of poverty, according to a Congressional Budget Office report Monday.
The impact on the employment rolls is slightly higher than the 1.3 million employment estimate from a 2019 report from the CBO, a nonpartisan agency that provides budgetary analysis to Congress.
The number has been disputed by employment advocates who cite the benefits from the raise and say businesses will be able to handle the costs.
‘Businesses will be able to handle the costs.’ How, exactly, do these ’employment advocates’ know that? Because there are a lot of business owners who dispute that nonsense. And even so, who are they to tell a private business owner he has to pay his workers more? What about the business owner — higher wages come out of his or her profits; how come there are no ‘business owner advocates?’
Wait, there are some.
“Small business owners know that more than doubling the federal minimum wage will lead to increased labor costs and tough choices,” says a Feb. 1 post at the website of the National Federation of Independent Business, which opposes the raise.
“They must either increase the cost of their product or service – which in many cases is not feasible – or reduce labor costs elsewhere. The reduction in labor costs would be achieved through reduced jobs, reduced hours, or reduced benefits. None of these changes benefit employees,” the NFIB noted further, adding: “According to the NFIB Research Center’s 2019 economic forecast, the Raise the Wage Act would lead to massive output loss, job loss, and income reduction on a national scale.”
How much?…
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