A candy bar sells for about a buck. Double the price of a candy bar and you won't sell as many. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to realize that as you increase the price of a service or product without a concomitant increase in the value of that service, the demand for that service will decrease. And that is what is happening with the drive to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour. The number of entry level jobs will decrease.
From Investors Business Daily:
From Investors Business Daily:
One of the most vexing economic issues today is the minimum wage. For many, the failure to raise the minimum wage to $15 or higher is a sign of our nation's stinginess and an essential part of the fight for income equality. However, the truth, sad to say, is quite different, as a new study shows.And thus it always is with liberals trying to curry favor with voters. They ignore basic truths to remake the economic universe in their image. Of course the consequences of their ignorance is always blamed on someone else. They'll scream that jobs for young minority males are disappearing because business owners are greedy white men who exult in their white privilege and ability to oppress yada yada yada....
The study by the American Action Forum, a nonpartisan think tank led by former Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, looked at minimum-wage hikes scheduled to take effect in the coming years in 14 states and the nation's capital and found they will "cost millions of jobs across the country and each lost job only leads to total wage earnings rising by a few thousand dollars."
The reason is simple: When you raise the minimum wage of low-skilled, low-productivity labor — a group that disproportionately includes young minority males — you inevitably destroy jobs. No business will hire someone and pay him more than he's worth.
