Now that Joe Biden has taken the helm at the White house, a lot of talk has been going around among the fake news-o-sphere that a $15 per hour federal minimum wage hike is a necessity because it would lift millions of people out of poverty. It has gotten to the point that NBC said in its report that "Biden has made it very clear that his economic plans are really centering on racial justice and gender economic justice. We know women and men of color are likely to be at the low end of wage distribution." Interesting. So opposition to a federal minimum wage hike would be tantamount to being a racist/sexist/xenophobe whatever have you. But what is the REAL deal? Is a minimum wage hike really good for women and PoC? Well, let's take a look at one city, near and dear to my heart, who used the same argument to advocate for a city government mandated minimum wage hike. The progressives in the city of Seattle saw fit to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour over the course of two years. What was the impact of that? Well, the University of Washington in Seattle asked that question. They did an entire study on it. The numbers were interesting, and not in a way that the left would have predicted. It seems that the increase in minimum wage actually COST jobs. According to the Seattle Times's report on the UW study:
"The team concluded that the second jump had a far greater impact, boosting pay in low-wage jobs by about 3 percent since 2014 but also resulting in a 9 percent reduction in hours worked in such jobs. That resulted in a 6 percent drop in what employers collectively pay — and what workers earn — for those low-wage jobs.
For an average low-wage worker in Seattle, that translates into a loss of about $125 per month per job." Wow. Employers actually preserve their own interests by offsetting higher HR costs with labor mitigation? Who would have thought? Leftist rag Vox wrote a piece that cited a study from the National Bureau of Economic Research. According to that piece:
"The economists observed the impact of the hike in 2017 and found it had dramatic effects on the low-wage workforce and employment.
Not all of them were good. They found that the policy 'reduced hours worked in low-wage jobs by 6-7 percent, while hourly wages in such jobs increased by 3 percent ... consequently, total payroll for such jobs decreased.' That means the total amount that employers paid to workers was less with the new minimum wage in place than projected payroll if the policy hadn’t gone into effect." So it seems that the very people that, according to NBC news and the Biden/Harris regime (along with every progressive ever) would be helped by a federal minimum wage hike, would be the very people adversely affected by it. They say you're a racist if you don't support it, but common sense and sensible economics say that you're a racist if you do support it.
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