The vast majority of people earning the minimum wage are young, entry-level workers<\/a>. \u00a0Very few people over the age of 16 actually make the minimum wage – and those over 25 that do usually do it because of choices, good or bad or indifferent, that either they or their parents made.<\/p>\nLIBRELLE: \u00a0Well, it’ll be good for them, too. \u00a0More money is good, right? \u00a0It stimulates consumer spending when workers have more money!<\/p>\n
ME: \u00a0 Well, yeah, but where does that “more money” come from?<\/p>\n
LIBRELLE: \u00a0Employers!<\/p>\n
ME: \u00a0And…?<\/p>\n
LIBRELLE: \u00a0They’ll pay more!<\/p>\n
ME: \u00a0Er…why?<\/p>\n
LIBRELLE: \u00a0Because the law will say so!<\/p>\n
ME: \u00a0Um…no, they won’t.<\/p>\n
LIBRELLE: \u00a0Sure they will. \u00a0$9.50 is more than $7.25!<\/p>\n
ME: \u00a0 Well, yeah – any minimum-wage worker will get more money per hour. \u00a0But it doesn’t mean their employers will spend more, especially in a tough economy.<\/p>\n
LIBRELLE: \u00a0 Well, that’s Bush’s fault.<\/p>\n
ME: \u00a0 Be that as it may, look at it this way. \u00a0Let’s say a store owner has $100 an hour to spend on payroll at her small business. \u00a0That’s her labor budget; it’s what she can afford to spend, given the revenues she brings in, on labor, on top of materials, rent, utilities and a modest wage for herself – and just to keep from going crazy, I won’t add in all the service taxes she’ll be paying under Governor Messinger’s<\/del> Dayton’s tax proposal. \u00a0Currently, that allows her to employ about 14 people at minimum wage. \u00a0 If the minimum wage goes up to $9.50, that means she can employ ten people.<\/p>\nAnd that’s not even counting the changes to the payroll tax, which bring it down to more like nine. \u00a0And that’s leaving out healthcare. \u00a0So – nine employees get a raise, and five get laid off. \u00a0Meaning the nine who are left are going to have to work a whole lot harder.<\/p>\n
LIBRELLE: \u00a0 The employer can just budget more for labor!<\/p>\n
ME: \u00a0Yeah, there’s not actually room in her budget to increase her labor costs by close to 50%. \u00a0Not unless her business’ revenues zoom upward which, by the way, isn’t happening these days.<\/p>\n
LIBRELLE: \u00a0She can take it out of her salary!<\/p>\n
ME: \u00a0Did you catch the part about her having a “very modest” salary after all her expenses? \u00a0If she tacks $40 an hour onto her labor costs, she’ll be working for free – which is less than the minimum wage. \u00a0She may as well close the business, then – which means instead of laying off five, she’ll be putting all 14 out of work.<\/p>\n
LIBRELLE: \u00a0Maybe the workers should\u00a0unionize!<\/em><\/p>\nME: \u00a0And that’ll increase revenues how?<\/p>\n
LIBRELLE: \u00a0Why do you hate children?<\/p>\n
(And SCENE)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I had a chat with Avery LIBRELLE, a liberal friend of mine at a local coffee shop in Saint Paul; Avery had just gotten off from a shift of answering phones for MPR’s pledge drive. LIBRELLE: \u00a0I’m glad the DFL are talking about raising the minimum wage. \u00a0It’s time the working poor caught a break. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[236,283],"class_list":["post-34300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy-and-the-market","tag-dramatization","tag-minimum-wage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34300"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41987,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34300\/revisions\/41987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}