California is set to raise its minimum wage from $10 and hour to $15 an hour. Economists are warning that this move will throw many of the least skilled who presently have jobs completely out of the job market and into welfare dependency. Having a job of some kind boosts ones self image, happiness and general well being while welfare dependency casts it beneficiaries into bitterness, resentment and hopelessness. Self sufficiency is a necessary prerequisite for a productive and rewarding life.
Never mind says University of Massachusetts – Amherst Prof. Arindrajit Dube, who says, “California’s experiment is worth running and monitoring.” George Mason Professor Donald Boudreaux responds in an open letter to Prof. Dube, “Even you, who generally support the minimum wage, concede that such an unprecedentedly high mandated minimum might well destroy jobs for many low-skilled workers. So what right have we as economists – what right has anyone – to use poor people as guinea pigs in such an ‘experiment’? I think none.”
Liberals don’t care if a minimum wage hike causes the low-skilled to lose jobs and employment opportunites because that makes more of them eligible for welfare, which liberals see as a feature not a bug in their minimum wage schemes.
Liberals want as large a dependent class as possible. This leads to their true goal which is equality. Of course, this sort of equality makes everyone equally miserable, but liberals see that as a fair price to pay to finally arrive at the nirvana state of equality.
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