Republicans and Labor
Interesting development last week, Missouri’s state Legislature decided a minimum wage of $10/hour is a hardship for business and too much for Labor. This comes after the MSC sided with St. Louis and Kansas City in setting a minimum wage of $10.10/hour. The Republican legislature decided differently and passed legislation to prevent local communities from establishing minimum wage above what the state mandates.
“ Thousands of workers in St. Louis will likely see smaller paychecks starting Monday, when a new Missouri law takes effect barring local government from enacting minimum wages different than the state minimum.
The law is drawing protests in St. Louis and in Kansas City, where a recent vote approving a higher minimum wage is essentially nullified without ever really taking effect.
The impact is direct in St. Louis, where the minimum wage had increased to $10 after the Missouri Supreme Court sided with the city in a two-year legal battle. Days after the Supreme Court ruling, Missouri’s Republican-led Legislature passed a statewide uniform minimum wage requirement. The state minimum wage is $7.70 per hour. Republican Gov. Eric Greitens declined to veto the bill, allowing it to become law.
An estimated 35,000 St. Louis workers saw pay raises after the court ruling, and the city’s plan had called for the minimum wage to increase to $11 per hour in 2018.
Republican State Sen. Dan Hegeman from rural northwest Missouri, said the higher minimum would force some employers to either cut jobs or move. Just like having healthcare insurance at Papa John’s would really impact the cost of pizza . . . 10 cents for a medium pizza.
‘You end up having fewer jobs and you do a disservice to the workers,’ Hegeman said. ‘In my heart of hearts, I really think it hurts people in the long run.'”
Missouri Republican Governor Eric Greitens refused to veto legislation limiting local minimum wage laws, is pushing RTW laws, and is looking to boost pay for some state employees who are “star” performers.
Some more original ideas from the Republican sector on how to improve the economy by riding on the back of the low-income citizens.
It’s the GOP. What did you expect? The modern GOP is indifferent to the well-being of most Americans, and only serves the top 1%.
Lets’ start analyzing the minimum wage where we usually end off: with how the newly higher pay recirculates in the rest of the consumer market. But let’s start out BACKWARDS: let’s imagine we are going to take pay away from the minimum wage workers.
I know this scenario sounds extremely implausible but stick with me — for some reason it seems easier to imagine what how the (consumer) money recirculates when we give the money back to the consumer.
Imagine we take back two dollars an hour from min wagers. That money will then be spent by better paid consumer/workers instead. Since consumers tend to purchase disproportionately more goods produced by people at their own pay level DEMAND FOR LOWER WAGE GOODS WILL LIKELY (not always) SHRINK — killing some minimum wage jobs.
Of course, if min wage raise is priced right — sending more money overall going to min wage incomes regardless even if fewer jobs — then, DEMAND FOR MIN WAGE GOODS WILL ACTUALLY INCREASE — creating more min wage jobs.
As long as we don’t overdo it. Since fed min was $11.45 (adjusted) in 1968 and per capita income has doubled since there seems little chance of overdoing anything.
https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=1.60&year1=196802&year2=201705
Second consideration (still second here): if fast food with 33% labor costs can pay $15/hr, then, Target with 10-15% labor costs ought to be able to pay $20/hr, and, Walmart with 7% labor costs (can’t wait to get a union in there) should be able to pay $25/hr.
Jason Furman, chairman of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers of all people touted that Walmart saves consumers $260 billion a year. Cut 10% off that Jason and you can give every Walmart employee a $20,000/yr raise.
Usual first point: with any other commodity than labor the first (that’s first) thought is (always) what proportion of the cost of production does the factor account for.
There are states where the median wage is not quite $15/hr. Raising the minimum to $15/hr seems impossibly overreaching — at least how it is made out in most of our academic and progressive press discussions (heads in the clouds or what?!). If a firm is paying every last worker $10/hr and has to go to $15 — and if labor represents 12% of costs, the consumer price goes up 4% (if every employee is paid 33% more). Sounds a lot less “impossible”, doesn’t it (down from the upper middle class clouds — pay attention please)?
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(2013 dollars)
yr..per capita…real…nominal…dbl-index…%-of
68…15,473….10.74..(1.60)……10.74……100%
69-70-71-72-73
74…18,284…..9.43…(2.00)……12.61
75…18,313…..9.08…(2.10)……12.61
76…18,945…..9.40…(2.30)……13.04……..72%
77
78…20,422…..9.45…(2.65)……14.11
79…20,696…..9.29…(2.90)……14.32
80…20,236…..8.75…(3.10)……14.00
81…20,112…..8.57…(3.35)……13.89……..62%
82-83-84-85-86-87-88-89
90…24,000…..6.76…(3.80)……16.56
91…23,540…..7.26…(4.25)……16.24……..44%
92-93-94-95
96…25,887…..7.04…(4.75)……17.85
97…26,884…..7.46…(5.15)……19.02……..39%
98-99-00-01-02-03-04-05-06
07…29,075…..6.56…(5.85)……20.09
08…28,166…..7.07…(6.55)……19.45
09…27,819…..7.86…(7.25)……19.42……..40%
10-11-12-13-14-15-16-17
Run,
It’s perennially been the case:
“Some more [standard] ideas from the [Conservative] sector on how to improve the economy by riding on the back of the low-income citizens”.
It’s called class warfare.
Denis
yep. now explain that to Sen Hegeman.
you might also mention that if it is a legally mandated minimum wage increase, then there will be no competitive disadvantage ..
unless of course people decide to buy their hamburgers from china.