Californians have officially been told, by actions of the
legislator and Governor Jerry Brown, that working just hard enough to not get
fired is good enough in California to earn a raise. California has officially
told lower income workers they no longer need to try hard to succeed. They
hardly have to try at all. Capitalism is for businesses, not individuals.
Individuals need not work smarter and harder, they barely need to work at all!
With minimum wage guaranteed to go from $8
an hour to $10 an hour by 2016, why bother working hard for the promotion or
raise? Why bother going that extra step for a customer, or to make the boss
happy? Why go back to school and work on getting a better education? What, for
a $1 an hour raise? Screw that! California has you covered with a guaranteed $2
an hour raise, all you have to do, is not get fired.
All this, at the expense of hard working Californians
who worked hard at their job and worked their way up to make more than the
current California minimum wage. At the expense of those who worked hard in school
and earned acceptance into a college or university where they too worked hard
only to graduate with a mountain of debt and a new job that pays barely over
minimum wage after you deduct the student loans and their interest. For anyone
who has ever tried to succeed at their job, the joke is again on you.
You see, California Democrats are once
again saying they wish to help the underprivileged and downtrodden, but fail to
not only help them, they succeed in hurting everyone, including the
underprivileged and downtrodden. They have authorized the increase in the
states minimum wage to a largest in the nation $10 an hour, from the current $8
an hour, a 25% increase in two years (the current federal minimum wage is $7.25
an hour). Now, who wouldn't want a 25% raise, especially one that is
guaranteed. No performance review, no quotas, no skill set improvement, no
extra-mile, no effort. Just get a minimum wage job and you get a guaranteed 25%
raise at the expense of everybody, including you.
"What, no, it costs the evil
businesses more money to pay that minimum wage increase, not people!" is
what you're thinking, right? Wrong! We all pay for minimum wage increases. The
only difference, we don’t make any more money in doing so, so inflation goes
up. Yes, the overall cost of all goods and services for everyone goes up along
with minimum wage. So, while those currently making $8 an hour will receive a
$2 an hour increase over the next few years, the rest of us will most likely
not get a 25% raise (if we all did, then inflation would grow even higher faster)
but we will see a proportional increase in our expenses.
How is that? Well the companies that make
goods and provide services and pay their employees minimum wage (the evil
doers) have clients. You may not be one of them, doesn't matter, because
someone you are a client of is a client of these businesses. When the suppliers
costs go up, so do the providers. It's high school economics. Think businesses
can just absorb the costs in their profit margin, because all California
businesses make so much? Sorry, these businesses paying the current minimum
wage do so for a reason, that's what they can afford and stay in business.
Increases in the most expensive line-item for most businesses (labor) by 25% is
a game changer, and not for the better. National economic think tanks are
already predicting 190,000 jobs will be cut as a result of this increase, not
to mention the tightening of belts beyond the limit they already have been
tightened.
If you make minimum wage, congratulations,
you'll get a 25% increase in your wages with no requirement of you than to not
get fired, but, the costs of the goods and services you pay for will go up too,
so the raise won’t help much. For those of you not earning minimum wage, you
won't get an increase in your wages (your employer will have to pay more for
their goods and services too as a result of this so they can't afford it) but
you will have to pay more for your stuff. Unless you work extra (now extra
extra) hard to stay ahead of those not working hard at all.
If you really want to help the
underprivileged and downtrodden in California, you'll invest in the Democrats
in the legislature, and Governor Brown, taking an online economics course. God
save California from California.
