Saturday, December 7, 2013

Raising The Minimum Wage - Socialist Job Killer

Socialists in government and union agitators are pushing to double the Minimum Wage to $15 a hour.   This is a very bad idea and would hurt the very people they are trying to help.  Most people that earn the Minimum Wage work in fast food, retail and other restaurants.  They are often part time jobs that attract young kids in high school and adults that do not have the job or social skills and or education to do anything else.  Putting the Minimum Wage up to $15 a hour would result in annual earnings of about $31,200 a year, assuming a five day week.  At that amount, companies like MacDonald's would change to self service methods to take orders and payment.  It is already happening at stores like Home Depot where one cashier can oversea four self service machines. 

This will become standard procedure if the Minimum Wage goes to $15 an hour.  It will be a job killer.  Most important, many of the older people working in fast food are so poorly educated, thanks to our failing inner city public schools, that they cannot even properly place an order, or make change.  That is the reason why cash registers today are completely automated, showing the food as picture buttons and computing the change owed the customer based on punching in the cash paid for the purchase. 
There is no thinking involved in the transaction.   At best, these people are order takers.  This is why the person behind the register just hands the customer the change owed, rather than counting it out the old fashioned way when cash registers had no such capability.

But this push is not about Minimum Wage workers.   This Blogger regularly hires clerical and lower level employees, with social skills who can read and write for $30,000 - $35,000 plus benefits.   If illiterate people were paid these wages working in fast food or retail, lower level employees with higher job skills theoretically would have to be paid more than is common today.  Of course, that won't happen since the competitive nature of most businesses is such that prices can't be raised.  In our case, if we had to pay more, for lower level employees, we would  make all lower level jobs 29 hour part time positions to avoid the need to pay benefits and or we would just hire fewer people in the US by off shoring more work to India to control costs.

Today as a result of Internet and computer connectivity, office work can be done from anywhere.  Manufacturing is already happening in China and other countries.  So raising the Minimum Wage would just push more jobs overseas.  It all sounds good in the name of Social Justice; but the reality is that raising the Minimum Wage is a Socialist job killer.    

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