Thanks to meddling democrats, a lot of teenagers had better get prepared to lose their jobs or not get hired at all today......WASHINGTON (CNN) — The federal minimum wage jumps 70 cents to $6.55 an hour on Thursday, the second of three scheduled increases mandated by last year’s Fair Minimum Wage Act.
The increase will affect workers in the 25 states that have minimum wages below the new national standard. A third increase, bringing the wage floor up to $7.25 an hour, is scheduled to go into effect in July 2009.
I love the tired, minimum-wage mantra that weeping liberals love to trot out about how a family of four cannot survive on current minimum wage. First of all, if all you can manage to make is minimum wage, how stupid were you for having two kids? Second, a family of four presumes two parents. If both hold full-time minimum wage jobs, that's over $27,000 a year in household income. Not like hitting the lottery but, it's a good start. Here are a few minimum wage facts to ponder:
-labor is a business resource, no different than iron ore to a steel factory, and it should be subject to the same forces of markets. When jobs are scarce and laborers are plentiful, the wages are lower. When labor is scarce, the wages likewise go up.
-minimum-wage type jobs are designed to train entry-level employees, instill good work ethics, promote personal responsibility, etc. They are not designed to support entire families.
-only about 6% of minimum-wage employees are still making minimum wage after a year of working. This means that if you work hard, demonstrate dedication and a willingness to learn new skills, your boss will see that you are a valuable employee and give you a deserved raise and ta-dah, you're no longer a minimun-wage employee. Only the most lazy, incompetent, unreliable, loafer is still making minimum wage after a year of working.
-a vast majority of minimum wage employees leave that job and move on to higher paying jobs elsewhere within 1 year. These jobs are only the first step on the job ladder, not the career job.
-businesses exist to make money, period. If Wendy's has 10 full-time minimum-wage employees working and then the wage is increased. That extra money to pay them isn't coming out of the profits of the business. One or two of those employees will get fired and the remaining 8 workers will have to do more. Minimum-wage laws cost young workers job opportunities.
-democrats pretend that they care about families trying to exist on minimum wage but, what they care about is getting re-elected. They'll smugly pat themselves on the back today, in front of CNN's cameras, for helping out the poor but, what they've done is not only make it easier to NOT work hard, NOT learn new skills, and NOT strive for something better, they've put a lot of young people out of work.
3 comments:
like it or not ed, there are whole families who depend on low-paying jobs to make ends meet. and they deserve help from the government. the cost of living is going up and so should the minimum wage.
Maybe they should have thought of that before they dropped out of high school, and decided to have sex before marriage and get pregnant. Maybe then, they would have been able to go to college, earn their money, instead of having the government give it to them, and then they could understand how unfair the system is.
Anon, I think Ed forgot to mention another drawback of raising the minimum wage. Not only do people lose jobs , but places raise their prices because of it. That hurts all of us. It's not a help.
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