The committee drafting the platform for the Democratic National Convention have hit upon a great idea, which would see their low wage peeps let go, turned to part timers, or replaced with robots
(The Hill) Democrats’ platform drafting committee took a first step toward giving Bernie Sanders a major concession, voting to adopt language in support of a $15 minimum wage.
The committee, which will continue drafting the party’s guiding document Saturday, also aligned itself with Sanders’s support for progressive ideas such as abolishing the death penalty and expanding Social Security, the Associated Press reported. The minimum wage language adopted echoes a common refrain by Sanders, who has called the current federal minimum of $7.25 a “starvation wage.”
What happens when the minimum wage is raised in most areas? Business owners can do one or more things
- Reduce the workforce. This can occur either through terminations, or simply not replacing staff when they leave
- Replace full time workers with part time workers, providing coverage for peak times while running with a lean full time staff
- Limiting hours for full timers
- Replacing workers with automation
Who will this hurt? A goodly chunk of the Democrats base. It won’t hurt the big wig Democrat donors and supporters. But, this is one the populist measures Dems need to patronize the Bernie supporters and #FightFor15 folks.
It will help those who provide automation services, though. That industry would do great!
To be clear, the platform does have to be adopted by the full committee at the next meeting. It surely will.
Crossed at Right Wing News.
Automation increases economic productivity. Steam shovels, combines, telephones, wheels, digital cameras, airplanes, computers etc all put some workers out of work. But where are the steam engine assemblers now? The film developing industry? Buggy whip manufacturers? By 2050 there will be precious few gasoline powered cars or coal fired power plants.
There is little evidence that reasonable increases in the minimum wage significantly hurts employment. Economists that pay attention to such things can even calculate the point at which a minimum wage does hurt employment!
That said, an economic system such as ours, rigged to serve the wealthy at the expense of the average worker, needs to find a way to benefit all its participants in the long term. We see today in the candidacies of Senator Sanders and citizen Trump (with his additional appeal to racism) that the average workers are rebelling against a system that has ignored their needs for decades. That leftist Ronald Reagan recognized this, expanding the gov’t subsidized basic income, or EITC.
But you raise a good point. Is raising the minimum wage the best way to help the working poor? Clearly our economy requires lower skilled, lower paid workers, but what’s a person to do when the job pays too little to live on? Maybe instead of a minimum wage, we institute conservative Milton Friedman’s concept of a negative income tax, assuring a national basic income. Of course the “new” conservatism, borne in the bowels of the wealthy, finds any recognition and criticism of wealth or income disparities abhorrent. Regardless, we ignore the masses at our peril.
Teach didn’t you already tell us that you have cut the hours if your workers down to 32?
In must if the cities where they have already raised the minimum wage they also have unemployment rates under the national average
Places like McDonalds typically have labor costs if about 1/3
Boosting the wage up a buck would increase their total costs by about 5% (1/7 times 1/3) something most customers wouldn’t notice ( especially since Obama has kept inflation at about 1%)