Democrats want you to believe that their mindless pursuit of a minimum wage hike has something to do with helping low wage workers.
Democrat Jackie Cilley is this year’s Democrat Golden Calf, proposing an hourly minimum wage hike in New Hampshire above fourteen-dollars-per hour. But think it through.
Who is most likely to be hit hardest by increasing the cost of doing business and who do we know will actually benefit?
Who will pay the price? Small business owners will pay, their consumers, low and unskilled workers, current employees, and even taxpayers.
There is no vacuum. Labor is a significant cost of doing business. If you arbitrarily crank up that cost it impacts every part of an operation, including the wages and benefits of more skilled employees. Those expenses have to be absorbed. That is done through reduced hiring, layoffs, decreases in benefits, reductions in hours, fewer products or services (less choice and competition), a change in hours of operation, fewer future opportunities, and/or price increases.
None of those things is good for workers–certainly not low-skilled, young, or entry-level workers, consumers, or employees. Nothing about the state declaring an arbitrary value to an hour of labor helps business owners, workers, or consumers.
So who does benefit?
Unions will benefit, and when unions benefit, Democrats do as well.
Union shops often pay unskilled and skilled rates of pay. If you drive the minimum wage above the rate for entry-level employment, every pay rate above that will inevitably need to be pro-rated upward and many contracts are built with stipulations which require that.
Anyone who has ever been in a union knows that when wages go up, a due increase follows. Increased dues collections provide Union bosses with more money to play with, and union money has a strange habit of ending up in the campaign coffers of Democrat candidates.
Note that in the case of municipal union employees, future contracts will seek proportional rate hikes to address governments arbitrary increase in the cost of labor raising taxes on everyone in that town whether they can afford to absorb the costs the legislature has forced on them or not.
New Hampshire Democrats don’t want you to think about the long list of risks to you and yours, nor do they want you to consider the political advantages for the Democrat party. They are sticking to their unscientific mind-numbing progressive narratives. More minimum wage gud…rrr’publicans bad.
These are the same Democrat who continue to lie to you about the benefits of ObamaCare, your plan, your doctor, costs, taxes, fines, privacy, the decreased access to care, they are lying about Medicaid expansion,(and almost everything else. Well, (surprise-surprise) they are also lying to you about their motivation for pushing a hike in the minimum wage.
They are also hiding from other unpleasant facts.
The average hourly rate of pay in New Hampshire, according to the New Hampshire Department of Labor, is nearly 23.00/hour already.
The occupation with the lowest average hourly reported rate in NH is creeping toward $11.00/hour on its own, in the Free market; a sum 48% higher than the current Federal minimum wage which New Hampshire enforces.
State Tax and regulatory policies Democrats favor and will fight to the death to protect already take too much money from business owners, removing opportunities to expand, hire, train, or reward employees for skills or institutional knowledge that would be difficult or impossible to replace.
ObamaCare is a huge burden on businesses (either as a tax or a regulatory cost) Democrats lied repeatedly to get and continue to protect despite the damage it does.
Doubling the minimum wage is just another insult to the engines of our economy. It takes choices away from employers about the value of work, productivity, and commitment and forces them to pay someone off the street twice as much even if they have no skills at all. There are negative consequences for such arbitrary political acts of will, and only a few potential benefits, which in this case all benefit Democrats.
So New Hampshire Democrats will happily put your employ-ability, Job growth, benefits, hours, opportunities, training, competition, consumer costs, and of course everyone’s municipal tax bill on the line. In return they can guarantee more money to union bosses who will then funnel “more money” to the Democrat party and elected officials like Jackie Cilley who unabashedly use government force to finance their political campaigns.
It is not about helping those most in need, it is about keeping progressive Fat cats fat and their political allies fatter.
