Click here to read my most recent Wall Street Journal op-ed regarding the impact of minimum wage increases on job losses. Read on if you’d like additional context.
In an op-ed that ran in today’s Wall Street Journal entitled, A Post-Labor Day, Minimum-Wage Hangover, I looked at recent research showing that mandatory minimum wage increases in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle have cost thousands of jobs as employers use labor more efficiently and turn to automation. The losses will come as a surprise only to people who don’t run a business for a living. To really help the working class, there is only one thing that will decrease poverty and increase opportunity: economic growth. And history has clearly shown that there is only one system that can produce economic growth sufficient to meaningfully reduce poverty and increase opportunity: free enterprise.
Also, over the Labor Day weekend, I was quoted by the Times Herald Record Online (published in Middletown, New York) on the topic of the New York state Labor Department’s Wage Board recommendation to move forward with minimum wage increases there of $15 an hour applicable only to the quick service restaurant sector. The article entitled, Businesses pan plan to hike fast-food minimum wage, quoted me as saying that NY’s proposed increase discriminates against fast-food chains with 30 or more outlets and punishes the franchise sector which lifts people from the working class to the middle class. This is simply the wrong way to go about helping people who need entry level jobs the most.