One of the comments to that blog post -
I am a Republican. I have had inklings of voting for Obama. But I am also a small business owner.
Obama seems like a good enough guy. I had thought I'd much rather have him than
Hillary.
Completely honest question here:
I've read in his stances
that he's in favor of making the minimum wage a "living wage" such that people
can pay bills and raise a family on it. If you assume that means making a the
minimum wage equal to, say, $25,000 a year...near the poverty line...that
equates to about $13.00 an hour...effectively doubling the minimum wage.
As a small business owner that employs a lot of kids at a rate ranging from
$7/hr to $10/hr, this would impact me. Most of these kids are late teens, early
twenties, high school dropouts. They play LOTS of video games and smoke LOTS of
pot. Generation Y is what their called.
We are just making ends meet because we have a lot of debt on the business that
we pay off (about $8,500 a month between three small restaurants). If the minimum wage
doubles, it could put us out of business.
One option for me would be to raise prices on our food...and all other similar
small business would have to raise the prices of their goods in a similar manner
to maintain margins. This would drive inflation through the roof...netting bad
stuff for the economy. The kids could by more video games and pot, i guess.
Also, if my employees (or Panera Bread, or CVS, or your corner coffee
store, etc.) are making $13 an hour, what will the employees who work in
manufacturing and make $16 an hour think? They'll now want $20 because they are admittedly
more skilled than minimum wage workers.
So the question: am I missing something when I read about his stances? How
does this do anything but crush the small business owner? Or any retail
operation?
Posted by SmallBusinessOwner | February 12, 2008 10:07 PM
meganmcardle.theatlantic.com
--------
I don't think Obama's actually going to try to pass a national $13/hour minimum wage, but is he going to go for something just a bit less? Is a national "living wage" part of his program?
Apparently it is -
"Create a Living Wage: Obama will raise the minimum wage and index it to inflation to make sure that full-time workers can earn a living wage that allows them to raise their families and pay for basic needs such as food, transportation, and housing."
barackobama.com
"Raise the minimum wage" is just standard Democratic policy, but "living wage" usually implies a pretty big increase, not one like the one that passed recently. From the examples I've seen they tend to be $8 to $12 per hour. Such a policy would be harmful. |
