It’s one of the very cornerstones of liberal politics – something they’re RIGHT NOW trying to FORCE on America’s struggling small businesses.
The $15 minimum wage has become one of the biggest rallying cries of the left, but a new study once and for all proves that enacting it would be flat-out lunacy.
This one shows in black and white how market-defying minimum wage hikes KILL jobs, CUT hours and SHRINK paychecks!
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The new report from the University of Washington isn’t an argument of theory. It’s not a discussion of what “could” or “might” happen.
It’s a cold hard look at what IS happening, right now, in Seattle.
The city is phasing in the $15 minimum wage, bumping pay from $9.47 to $11 per hour in 2015, then to $13 per hour last year.
Hopefully, it’s not too late for the city to put a stop to it before it hits that $15 target, because the new report shows how the law HURTS the very people it’s supposed to help.
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As the minimum rises, low-wage workers earn less!
In the nine months after the minimum wage jumped to $13, the average low-wage worker saw a 9.4 percent drop in the number of hours worked each month. Even worse, the number of low-wage jobs dropped by 6.8 percent.
That adds up to 5,000 lost jobs and 3.5 million “lost hours.”
In real-world numbers, the average low-wage employee’s pay check in Seattle fell by 6.6 percent, or $125 per month.
These are the people who need every cent they can get… yet they were cruelly punished by the bait-and-switch stunt of the minimum wage law.
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One expert warned that officials should pay close attention to what’s going on in Seattle. David Autor, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told the Washington Post that the study is “very credible.”
“If I were a Seattle lawmaker, I would be thinking hard about the $15 an hour phase-in,” he told the newspaper.
Autor even told FiveThirtyEight that this should be considered a “canary in the coal mine moment.”
He’s right, because low-wage jobs are often the backbone of the economy.
And when they fall, the entire structure could crumble.
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When workers have fewer jobs and fewer hours, employers and customers also suffer.
If there’s no one to answer the phone, orders can’t be placed or filled. If there’s no one to operate the fork lift, the warehouse can’t be stocked. And if the kitchen is short of help, diners are turned away.
“It’s not a political problem; it’s a math problem,” Anthony Anton, head of Washington Restaurant Association, warned in a 2015 interview with Forbes as the first of those wage hikes kicked in.
Looks like he was correct. Seattle has a math problem, and it’s threatening to DESTROY one of the nation’s hottest job markets where unemployment dropped from 5.8 percent in 2012 to 3.7 percent last November and the median home price has doubled in five years.
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If the minimum wage is allowed to jump to $15 an hour – as soon as next year for some employers – all of that can go down the drain. Yet liberals are looking to raise the minimum wage across the country, with many calling for that same $15 to be the national standard.
But as the Seattle failure clearly shows, the government shouldn’t set the minimum wage.
They should stay out of it altogether, and let the free market set those rates so everyone – workers and employers alike – can benefit from a booming economy.
-The Horn editorial team