Congratulations, 94% of North Dakota workers: You just got a pay cut.
The news of a 70 cent per hour raise for workers earning minimum wage was the result of the clamoring of a fallacious argument that there are vast untold masses out there trying to support a family of six on $6.50 an hour. That argument has been made for decades and is totally dishonest. Take the photo above, for instance; it’s over two years old, but the McDonald’s on Main Avenue here in Bismarck was paying up to $8.00 per hour at a time when the minimum wage was in the six dollar range!
Take this quote from Job Service of ND employee Michael Ziesch, via KX News: “Most employers have already been paying above and well above min. wage esp. to retain qualified employees. Even in the job offers we see, that employers post with our agency, only about 6-percent of those offers, that include a wage, include a wage that is at or below minimum wage.”
So who makes up that six percent of North Dakota workers? According to Mr. Ziesch: “…most of the minimum wage jobs are held by the very youngest employees in the work force and some of the older employes in the work force.”
So, congratulations…those of you who are trying to support a family of six just got an effective 70 cent per hour pay cut, as the wage floor has been brought up. All in the spirit of making liberals somewhere feel good. Here’s why this is such a sad, sick joke (as are most liberal policies):
Suppose you are some poor guy who’s working a minimum wage job — maybe even two — to support a small family. You’ve got age and a little experience on your side, making you a more dependable and responsible employee than some teenage kid working his first job. It’s allowed you to work your way from $6.50/hr starting to $7.25/hr due to a series of incentive raises that you’ve earned for being a good employee. You’re not exactly “movin’ on up like George and Weezy,” but you’re advancing.
Next comes the latest federal feel-good program, the minimum wage increase. Now everybody is making what you are…including the 16 year old that sauntered in yesterday to apply for a job. In the mean time, the price of goods and services that you purchase from your family is going to go up to absorb the increased labor costs of the store from which you buy them. Effectively, you just got a pay cut.
According to that Job Service fella, 94% of North Dakotans are included in the pay cut group. These are the people who are not making minimum wage, or at least they were not prior to the jump to $7.50/hour. What if you make $9 or $10 per hour? You now effectively make $8.25 or $9.25. You went backwards because the bottom wage just came closer to what you earn.
When I’ve tried to make the argument against the idea of huge numbers of North Dakota employees making minimum wage, I have heard the argument that many of them are making “just above minimum wage” and don’t figure into the statistic. Guess what? Those are the people hardest hurt! If they were making $7.50 an hour last week, well above the minimum wage, they just got reset to zero. The minimum wage just went up, not everybody’s wage. Maybe they were making $8.00 an hour, not bad for entry level work. Now they’re barely above the minimum. For the 6% workers we’re told were “lifted up” by this increase, 94% of workers were brought down.
This is how supposedly “compassion-driven” legislation works, folks. While I’m sure plenty of politicians are out there patting themselves on the back for “helping the little guy,” the vast majority of workers (especially in North Dakota) just got punched in the wallet. The question is: how many actually know it?
The government knows exactly what they are doing. Everyone seems to have forgotten that payroll taxes are based on gross wages. The higher the wage the higher the payroll tax paid to the government. The government just raised taxes but called it a wage increase. Raising minimum wage just drives inflation and perpetuates the tax increase resulting in billions more for the government. We the sheep better wake up soon before it’s too late.
I wish more people could recognize that you can legislate wealth. The monetary value assigned to labor doesn’t mean anything. It’s what that work produces that counts.
Flipping burgers produces a certain value. If the government says that has to be $8/hr, than everything else will have to adjust to it.
But there are morons out there that think raising minimum wage increases employment.
Oh sorry, I screwed up what I wrote. It should read “you can’t legislate wealth”.
100% correct, but, people in that wage range may not make enough to pay income tax, BUT will pay more in to the soc.sec./med.care fund. (of which they will never benefit)
I have been paying the unskilled 15 yr. old who does odd jobs for me $8.00 starting, And I start those who run combines or tractors at $10.00. All get some benefits too. They get raises as they prove their worth. I do not need some damn politician telling me what to pay my help.
Think about that statement for a minute. Please insert between the word government and the word knows, the words ‘thinks it’
Wow, you really convinced me. I never really thought of it like that.
I can’t believe they raised the min. wage again! We have a successful business that nets around 350,000 a year, now we are only going to make 345,000 a year! FUCK that I am closing the doors, there is no way I am getting out of bed for under 350,000!
Exactly right Clit, let those young kids beg from their parents, why should I be the one supporting their spending habits? And hey, as for those old fucks working for me, is cat food really that bad? I really doubt it, and if they had their shit together when they were young, they wouldn’t be in the fix they are today. Who says they actually need those prescriptions, they are probably better off without all those pills.
Most jobs that pay minimum wage aren’t making that kind of money. They’re small businesses that every dollar matters. 70 cents an hour times 10 employees times 40 hours a week is an extra 280 a week in expenses that they didn’t have before. An extra 14,560 a year on a business making 50-75k in profits a year is a massive hit.
Funny. Truth is, in the early senior years, there is a cap on what seniors can make with Social Security. And, even in make believe land, prices go up to negate the wage increase. So seniors are no better off. In the real world, prices tend to go up more than the wage increase.
It’s amazing how the liberal always pretends that each new tax is so minor. “The minimum wage is only going up by 70 cents.” “An 8% tax really isn’t that big for health care.” We’re only going to raise taxes 2% on the wealthy.” “The cigarette tax only went up by 60 cents a pack.” Etc.
By itself, any one of these taxes, while an additional burden, wouldn’t be that bad. But tax after tax after tax after tax, mixed with health care costs added on, and complying with new regulations, and having to buy green, and go carbon neutral adds up to massive losses for businesses, AND for individuals.
Sure a 2% rise in costs isn’t bad, if that’s all it was. But that comes on the heels of a 5% raise here, and a 3% raise there, and a 1.15% tax here, and a 500 dollar fee here, and a monthly compliance price of 1500 here, and on and on and on.
It’s like cooking a frog. You can’t drop him in a pot of hot water. He’ll just jump out. But if you raise the temp by degrees, you’ll boil him to death soon enough.
So now the min wage earner, old, young, uneducated or untrained, will make $15,600 gross instead of 14,144 gross/yr. if and it is a big IF, they are working full time. It is good timing for the min wage earners. Most businesses have cut to the bone and can’t lay off anymore and still run efficiently. The ones who should worry are the just over min wage, as unemployment sneaks up (at least in this area) more bodies mean more people to choose from to fill those min. wage jobs. Adios
not true… everyone will now expect a .70 raise. i certainly would. and thats what the unions wanted. artificial wage inflation is bad.
I can’t believe someone actually posted something so self contradictory.
It screws people over, but HOORAY!
Nonsense.
But almost none of them will get it.
For example, waiters get 1/2 mw. So they’ll get a 35 cent an hour wage, and see their tips drop as prices raise. Since waiters account for most of the minimum or below wage jobs…the raise screws them.
Hooray for bs economics!
More realistic is this: Man they raised the minimum wage. I broke even last year. This will bury me. I’m over. I’ll have to let my four guys go. I know they have no where to find another job. Two of them are drug offenders that I hired out of jail. One is mentally slow. One is handicaped, can’t see very well. But I was able to pay them a bit. They were happy to get the job. I was working (mostly).
Now, I guess Obama will have to carry them. I can’t any more.
I wonder how to sign up for food stamps since as an employer I don’t qualify for Unemployment.
Minimum wage—-truth is there should be NONE.
Kenny, Another failed economist.
Spoken like someone who has never actually run a business.
No, Farm, I think they do know what they’re doing. It’s just that they’re telling us they’re trying to do something else.
The point is bigger government and more control through endless taxing and spending.
The thing about the minimum wage is that it’s essentially a tax on low-wage workers.
It inflates the cost of people previous earning below the minimum, and has no impact on those earning above it. That inflation in cost is dealt with by hiring fewer people at a higher wage.
Sure, that means wages go up a bit, but it also means more unemployment.
But some jobs at a lower wage for entry-level and low-skill people than no jobs available for those people at all.
Those minimum wage people are breaking our backs.
You eat any shit they feed you.
Running Dog Lackeys with their noses up each others butts.