Minimum Wage Increases Drive Up ALL Wages AND Cost Jobs

When the minimum wage is increased it forces upward ALL wages above due to wage compression. When we increase the minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 (approximately a 40% increase!), that increases the wage of those at the bottom from $7.25 to $10.10. What about someone making $8? Or $9? Or $10? The law would require that they ALL be raised to at least $10.10. But is that enough for someone previously making $8, $9 or $10? Logically, of course not! Thing is, the compression doesn't stop there. ALL wages above the NEW minimum wage are also affected!

For example, what about someone with 5 years experience and making $10.10 before the minimum wage increase? Is ANY company going to leave their wage there so that they make the same as someone just hired at $10.10? Of course not. Their wage must be increased too. Let's say their wage is increased from $10.10 to $12.50 ... ie, a smaller increase of 'only' 24%. That seems more fair, eh? But what about someone with 8 years experience who was making $12? Now someone less qualified/experienced is making $12.50, 50 cents more than they do. What do you do about that? Raise their wage also to something like $14.40 ... ie, 'only' a 20% increase. Now, what about a person who'd been making $14 before the minimum wage was increased? Can't leave them making less than someone now making $14.40, right? And so on ... with EVERY wage above the new minimum wage.

So, we can see that when the minimum wage is increased, it's NOT just the wages at/near the bottom that get increased. It forces employers to increase the wage of most(!) hourly workers.

Let's examine the resulting impact on employers. If they're forced to give NEARLY ALL hourly workers an average increase of, say 20% (remember it's a 40% increase just for those at the bottom), That's a VERY non-trivial hit to a company's bottom line. It's a historical statistical(!) fact that minimum wage increases hurts employment. Companies either slow their hiring or fire people in order to stay profitable. Would we rather they go bankrupt and have everyone lose their job?

Even President Obama's own CBO understands these economic factors. These consequences are discussed in a new National Review article that references that CBO report.

All of the analysis above is not only common sense when one considers the larger implications but historical facts verify it. We can't keep doing these things and expect different results especially when common sense tells us it's nuts. We've got to think with more common sense and a longer view of things or we're going to allow our federal and state governments to ruin our economy. We can't keep letting those knuckleheads do all our thinking for us!

The Truth About The Unemployment Numbers. It's Not What You Hear From The Media

President Obama once again bragged about his economic policies having created 8 million jobs. Sounds good, eh? Problem is, over 10 million Americans have given up looking for work during his terms in office. Even a child in elementary school can do the math. That's a net decrease in employment of 2 million Americans on Obama's watch!

How come the unemployment rate has dropped under 7% during Obama's terms in office? Because 10 million Americans have given up looking for work. The 'unemployment rate' can decrease due to either net jobs added or people leaving the workforce and therefore no longer being counted as unemployed. (Ref. The Truth ...)

The truth is, if there were as many people in the workforce or looking for work now as there were in 2007 the unemployment rate today would be over 11%. Indeed, the labor utilization rate (the percentage of Americans employed or looking for work) is 63% ... a 34-year low! The employment picture hasn't been this bad since President Carter's policies did pretty much the same thing. (Ref. The Truth ...)

Making matters even worse is that a large percentage of jobs created by Obama's policies have been part-time. For example, through the first seven months of last year 77% of jobs created were part-time! That leads to what's called 'underemployment'. Factor in underemployment and the unemployment rate is 14.3% and it continues increasing. (Ref. The Truth ...)

Another truth the Media and this Administration don't want to talk about is that most of the real (ie, good-paying full-time) jobs were created in Republican-led states via Republican pro-growth policies. Democrat policies at the national and state levels had nothing to do with that and instead have been killing jobs all across our country.

Read The Truth: America's Unemployment Stats They Don't Want You To Know for the above information and even more really bad news that I haven't shared here.

And It Was Republican Policies, Not Democrat, That Created Most Of Those Jobs

It's interesting to hear President Obama and other Democrat leadership take credit for the jobs growth during this 'recovery', anemic as it is. The facts say otherwise.

The jobs improvement in the US occurred almost totally in Republican-led states and has been the result of Republican policies. The states (and cities) with the worst jobs results are nearly all Democrat-led.

Republican governors and/or legislatures have implemented policies that are business-friendly. That's why businesses have been moving to their states in droves. They've also taken action to reduce their states' taxes, debt and spending. Republican states have tended to be fiscally and economically stable during this recovery. Democrat-led states have tended to be the ones in the most trouble economically and fiscally.

President Obama's and Democrat leadership's claims that their policies have led to what anemic improvement we've had in the unemployment numbers is factual nonsense. If anything, their policies have slowed the recovery.

80% Of Jobs Added The Past Four Years Were Part-Time. That's NOT "Growth"!

I thought the state of our economy was bad when I found out recently that the net number of jobs added to our economy the past four years is zero. Here's a reminder of the facts about that:

1. The unemployment rate decrease is almost totally due to people giving up looking for work and leaving the workforce. Another way to say that is, when you stop looking for work you are no longer counted as unemployed which drives the unemployment rate down.
2. If the same number of people were in the workforce now (instead of dropping out of it) as were in it at the beginning of this recession the unemployment rate would be around 11%. The claimed improvement in the unemployment rate is a total illusion.

As if that weren't condemnation enough proving that the economy is not better off after all, we now find out that of the jobs that were created, 80% of them have been part-time! We've been bleeding full-time jobs and replacing them with part-time jobs. That represents a sick economy, not a healthy one.

Contrary to loud and frequent proclamations by the president, his democratic allies and The Media that the jobs picture is better than it was four years ago that's only true if you believe that part-time jobs are just as healthy for our country's economy and for families as are full-time jobs.

Four years after G. W. Bush's tax cuts went fully into effect we had full employment at 4.4%. After four years of President Obama's recovery programs the unemployment rate is still well over 7%, the real unemployment is still(!) near 11% and part-time job increases have outnumbered full-time jobs 4 to 1. Not only has this jobs environment not improved, it's far worse than under Bush after the same duration of jobs policies. Facts can be inconvenient things, huh?