My biggest question is when did entry level jobs become a way to make a living? When I entered the job market I worked for minimum wage and I knew if I wanted to make more money I needed to learn a trade or go to college and receive an education that would help me get a better job. I chose to join the military to get some experience and then attended college when I finished my tour; it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. The bottom line is that a minimum wage isn’t supposed to be a living wage, it never was.
In areas where the “living wage” has been tested (like Seattle), many employees ended up making less money because their employers reduced their hours so they could maintain their profit margins. Some small businesses cut back on workers and/or stopped hiring in order to stay in business.
In many cases a company’s payroll is the most expensive part of operating their business and raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour is more than a 100% increase from the current rate so of course employers will cut back. Unfortunately, reducing the number of employees negatively affects service for customers which in turn could lead to losing business. There’s always the option of raising prices but this could hurt sales and the bottom line is as prices go up in the marketplace, the increased hourly wage employees get won’t go as far.
I find it interesting that the same people who protest and riot over getting $15 an hour are often the same people fighting for immigration and sanctuary cities. They just don’t get that allowing a large amount of illegal immigrants into our country doesn’t increase wages it decreases them. Many of these illegal immigrants would gladly work for less than $15 an hour and employers would gladly hire them.
I have absolutely no problem with bringing in legal immigrants with special skill sets that U.S. companies need and are having a difficult time filling. I have a Canadian friend who has a Work Visa because of his expertise in the energy industry. There weren’t enough job candidates in the U.S. with his amazing skill sets but this isn’t the case with most immigrants. A huge percentage of illegal immigrants aren’t college educated nor possess high-end skills sets. How many Hispanic computer programmers cross the border?
My Canadian friend went through the legal immigration process and has been paying a lot in taxes thus contributing to our economy. It makes absolutely no sense to promote immigrating poor people from other countries. Liberals will tank our economy with their ideology just like what’s happening with other countries around the world that have bankrupted themselves by allowing the masses to vote themselves “free stuff.” I place most of the blame on the Democrats who use this mentality to get elected. What we really need is for both parties to tell voters the truth; we’re broke and we all need to start making sacrifices to prevent an economic collapse.
Keep in mind that none of these illegal immigrants being paid under the table are paying income or payroll taxes so they contribute nothing towards tax revenues. So they’re receiving benefits from our government like free schooling for their children but aren’t paying anything towards the costs. You don’t have to be an economics professor to figure out that this isn’t a good economic model.
Sure they spend some money here so they pay sales taxes for goods and services but this is a fraction of what American citizens pay and the money we earn stays here whereas a lot of illegal immigrants send money home which means the money completely leaves our economy. This has the same horrendous economic impact that a trade deficit has on an economy as it lowers a country’s GDP which means the amount of money that goes round and round allowing everyone a chance to get a part of it continues to decline.
One last point to dispel one of the liberals main selling points about allowing illegal immigrants into our country and that is they say they’ll do work none of us are willing to do such as working in agriculture. They say that costs would go up dramatically for things like produce if these workers weren’t willing to do the work. Isn’t this a comparable mentality to slave owners keeping the costs down for Americans on goods by using slaves?
What would happen to produce prices if the workers were paid $15 an hour and had to along with their employers, pay payroll taxes? Prices would go up dramatically thus negating the advantage of the new “living wage.” Either Democrats don’t get this economic concept or they don’t care and are just lying to pander for votes.
By the way, I heard a liberal talking about the above issues and he was at a complete loss when it came to defending his position. He was one of the leaders in the movement and couldn’t deny that his pro-immigration stance and the living wage pursuit might be mutually exclusive. He was asked since he was so for immigration and how great it is for our country, how many immigrants we should let in? The interviewer asked the protestor should we allow everyone in who wants to come here since they are so great for our country.
He was obviously shell shocked by the questions and fumbled around for an answer and eventually said he’ll leave it up to economists to figure it out. If one of the leaders of the movement can’t answer these questions then what are these protestors protesting for? They are taught to hate America for being morally corrupt but don’t have a clue what they’re talking about. Republicans don’t hate illegal immigrants who have a dream for better things for themselves and their children they hate the negative impact they have on the citizens of our country because we can’t afford to save the world even though I know we’d all like to.
Hopefully you can see what I’m getting at and that is Democrats fighting for increased wages while pushing for relaxed immigration standards is completely ridiculous and they can’t successfully debate the point. Plus as I mentioned, minimum wage was never meant to be a living wage. Forcing employers to increase their payrolls such a large amount can only lead to fewer jobs, higher prices, and/or reduced employee hours. Once again, this is Economics 101.