Two good bits of news out of the New Hampshire State Senate this week.
SB 490, an end of life study committee bill that was sold by the sponsor as a path to assisted suicide legislation, was put to death by a vote of 12-10.
Cornerstone thanks the senators who voted ITL. Contact information for senators is at this link.
Sens. Giuda, Daniels, and Gannon spoke against the bill during today’s floor debate. Sen. Soucy was the only Democrat to vote ITL, and her vote was critical to passage of the ITL motion.
Respect for the dignity of human life won when SB 490 lost.
Another bill put to bed, so to speak, was a pathway to fight for fifteen, proposed by Dem. Sen. Soucy.
State Sen. Donna Soucy, D-Manchester, described the bill as a bit more friendly than the typical minimum wage hike because it carved out a discount to the minimum wage for employers who offer health care benefits. For those employers, the minimum pay rate per hour would be $7.50 in 2018, $9 in 2019, $10.50 in 2020 and $12 in 2021.
Soucy argued that because neighboring states such as Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island each have a minimum wage set above $10 per hour, New Hampshire needs to do the same to be competitive.
No, it doesn’t. As State Sen. Guide points out,
“I’ve never had an employee in my small business ask what the state minimum wage was,” he said. “They did ask what I was willing to pay. If it wasn’t sufficient, they exercised the force of the free market and they went somewhere else, and I was forced to raise my wage. That’s the way it’s supposed to work in a free market economy.”
I’ve written at great length about New Hampshire’s average hourly wages using data from the Department of Employment Security (in 2014, 2015, and 2017, for starters). It is exceptional because the market is free to decide what labor is worth. This improves the odds that unskilled workers will not just get jobs but skills they can leverage into better wages, which New Hampshire’s data demonstrates, without any state minimum wage, year after year.
As Sen. Dan Innis points out,
“[SB554] works against the very principles of free markets,” he said. “Most places in New Hampshire do not pay the minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, in fact they’re paying $10 an hour and up, and this bill is unnecessary and will result in New Hampshire jobs being lost, and it will hurt business owners as well as the people it is purported to help.”
Legislators have no clue what labor is worth, as evidenced by the calamities underway in more progressive places where politicians have been permitted to increase the cost of labor above what the market can bear.
Thank the New Hampshire State Senate for assisting in SB544’s legislative death. But expect the idea to rise from the dead next session, and every one after it. Progressive ideas never die as long as we keep electing progressives to force their ill will upon us.
