Economic dolts! Minimum wage hikes are taking down small businesses

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As most people know, minimum wage hikes kill businesses and jobs. Small business is the backbone of American capitalism. As more and more businesses move to $15 minimum wage, several mom-and-pop coffee shops, as well as restaurants, are responding by cutting hours, eliminating jobs or closing down entirely because they can’t keep up with rising wages under the law.

If anything was predictable, this was it.

According to Fox News:

“For some of these businesses, the minimum wage hikes tip the balance between staying in business and going out of business,” Panos Mourdoukoutas, professor of economics at LIU Post in New York, wrote in Forbes.

Boston’s iconic restaurant Durgin-Park in Faneuil Hall was forced to shutter its doors in January after nearly two centuries in business. The owners said they couldn’t keep up with the wages and health care premium hikes.

“We’d been thinking about [closing] for the last year,” Michael Weinstein, CEO of Ark Restaurants, which purchased Durgin-Park in 2007, told Boston.com. “First of all, our landlords are terrific. It’s an expense problem that we’ve been facing. We [own] several venues across the country that are facing a minimum wage increase. As part of that, we’re facing an increase in liability, property and health insurance.”

Minimum wage jobs in New York and Illinois are wiping out plenty of jobs, FEE reports. The living wage concept is so morally and abstractly enticing that people ignore basic economics.

By advocating minimum wage hikes, people get to signal their own political virtue—at the expense of other people’s jobs, FEE reports.

California’s Jerry Brown said that “Economically, minimum wages may not make sense. But morally, socially, and politically they make every sense.”

If they don’t have jobs, how is that morally, socially, and politically sensible?

And if that doesn’t succeed in damaging our economy, we can always count on Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to chase 25,000 jobs out of town.

After winning her House race last year, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., “swung by” to say goodbye to the Coffee Shop in Union Square where she used to work.

She tweeted: “The restaurant I used to work at is closing its doors. I swung by today to say hi one last time, and kid around with friends like old times.”

AOC forgot to mention that they were closing because the $15 minimum pay raise she supports put him out of business, The New York Post reported.


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oldarmyblog
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oldarmyblog
4 years ago

“If they don’t have jobs, how is that morally, socially, and politically sensible?”
Easy, because then they become dependent on government hand outs and Vote “D”.
Progressives hate anything that allows people to be self sufficient.

herbert r richmond
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herbert r richmond
4 years ago

They will not be satisfied until they bring down the middle class and block anyone from starting a business on their own.