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7 Small Businesses Tell Us How Obama’s Call For An Increase In Minimum Wage Would Affect Them: ‘Bad, Bad, Bad’

March 06, 2013
Wilson

Writer

President Barack Obama during his wholly original and exciting State of the Union address last month called for Congress to raise the federal minimum wage.

“We know our economy’s stronger when we reward an honest day’s work with honest wages. But today, a full-time worker making the minimum wage earns $14,500 a year. Even with the tax relief we’ve put in place, a family with two kids that earns the minimum wage still lives below the poverty line. That’s wrong,” he said.

“That’s why, since the last time this Congress raised the minimum wage, 19 states have chosen to bump theirs even higher. Tonight, let’s declare that, in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full time should have to live in poverty — and raise the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour.”

But what do small businesses have to say about the president’s proposal? We’re glad you asked. That’s what we’re here for.

Below is a collection of testimonials from small-business owners who’ve partnered with The Marketplace by TheBlaze, a unique online store featuring some of the best and finest small businesses in the nation.

Here’s what they had to say about the president’s suggestion:

Creative Learning Connection

How does the proposed $9 minimum wage affect any hiring decisions you’re currently faced with?

At the moment my business is so small that I have no help besides family, but the idea of a higher minimum wage is very frightening for our future prospects! If minimum wage goes up, we would definitely delay our first hires.

Do you believe your business would benefit from the $9 proposed minimum wage or be adversely affected? Why?

There is no doubt we would be adversely affected by an increase minimum wage. When I start hiring, I will be in need of part time help that is fairly low skill — teenagers or stay-at-home moms wanting just a little extra money in their budget — that type of thing.

Higher minimum wage would add financial strain to our business.

Mrs. Cavanaugh’s Chocolates

How would the proposed $9 minimum wage affect your business?  

It would hurt our business greatly.

How does the proposed $9 minimum wage affect any hiring decisions you’re currently faced with?  

We would not hire any new people and we may have to let some go and cut back.

Do you believe your business would benefit from the $9 proposed minimum wage or be adversely affected? Why?   

We would be adversely affected. Government needs to get out of our way. Why don’t we pay congress minimum wage or no wage. Let them donate their time.  By the time we pay all the taxes and jump through all their hoops to stay in business we have to practically work for nothing as owners.

Rinse Bath & Body

How would the proposed $9 minimum wage affect your business?

Bad, bad, bad. Obviously our cost of labor would increase. We have not raised our prices in over 5 years even though the costs of our ingredients have increased. With a minimum wage increase along with the continued rise in ingredient & packaging costs we will need to seriously consider a price increase. We could also absorb the increase by letting go of one of our workers putting more demands upon those who are left.

How does the proposed $9 minimum wage affect any hiring decisions you’re currently faced with?

In the next 4 weeks we are opening up our first retail store & were looking to hire 2 people to help staff it. Now rather than the wage we could to afford (and proudly) offer for the positions, which would attract a better candidate base for the position, against minimum wage isn’t as enticing. Honestly, much of the entry level workforce out there isn’t worth $7.00/hour with the motivation & work ethic they hold.  And now they are going to want us to pay them $9.00/hour?!?!

Do you believe your business would benefit from the $9 proposed minimum wage or be adversely affected? Why?

Adversely affected. Every supplier, vendor or business partner we have will be affected similarly… driving up prices for us… which will in turn drive up prices for our customers.  Or it will mean they let people go, and we might have to as well.

EmergencyGoBags.com

How would the proposed $9 minimum wage affect your business?

The $9 minimum wage will have a negative effect on our business by forcing us to raise prices and possibly cutting back on some of the products that we carry.

How does the proposed $9 minimum wage affect any hiring decisions you’re currently faced with?

We are currently in the process of hiring/looking at hiring… the positions we are looking at now require more than minimum wage for the type of positions and therefore we’ve had to extend only part-time work offers rather than full-time. With the minimum wage going up it will force us to either not hire any more people, hire only part-time workers and/or just have the current employees take on more work. Our company is currently experiencing “growing pains” we need help… but we’re in that window where we just cannot afford the help we need!

Do you believe your business would benefit from the $9 proposed minimum wage or be adversely affected? Why?

Our business would be adversely affected by a $9 minimum wage because we work with suppliers and manufacturers who run larger businesses and we already know that they will be hurt by both the minimum wage increase and Obamacare.

What it means is that the consumer is going to be the one hurt by price increases, as all the businesses (as well as ours) have to deal with the ever increasing burden of new costs and regulations… it seems to be a never ending cycle. Small Business owners are either forced to do everything themselves, making it impossible for them to have time to grow their businesses, let alone have any time for their families — or they need to hire experts to handle the work for them and therefore be in business solely for the benefit of others, as any profits goes into someone else’s pocket.

At times it seems like a no-win situation. You stay in business because you believe in what you’re doing, what you’re offering will help others and because you still believe in the American Dream!

Kleids

How would the proposed $9 minimum wage affect your business?

It would make us less competitive with imports.

How does the proposed $9 minimum wage affect any hiring decisions you’re currently faced with?

It would mean keeping all new hires to part-time hours.

Do you believe your business would benefit from the $9 proposed minimum wage or be adversely affected? Why?

Adversely affected. The cost of raw material and services will go up and force me to raise my prices.

Sweetly Divine

My business’s name is Sweetly Divine, and just like many businesses in America, we hire people to help us get the product to the public. We are a small business and we are always looking to get the best price for our customers.  We understand that the pay we offer is not a salary you can build your life on, but rather is a transitional job, where mostly college kids will work or someone who is going through some hard times.

We currently have three employees, and if I would be forced to raise the minimum wage to $9 I would have to lay off two of them and work additional hours myself. This would slow the growth of my business.

When the business grows and I am able to pay people more, I do so according to their skills and desire to work.

Over the years I have had many employees. At one point I had nine people working for me. One employee started as a dishwasher, but was able to advance to a manager. The business grew and increased in sales, and it was exciting to be able to provide my employees the opportunity to advance in the company. Not only was I able to help the community by providing jobs, but I was able to spend quality time with my own family. However, because of the economy’s downfall, I was forced to lay off many people. Now I work 16 or more hours a day, and don’t get as much time with my family as I would like. If the wage were to increase to $9 an hour, I would be left with no other option than to lay off the few employees I do have. I wouldn’t feel like I was benefitting the community, because I would not be able to provide employment.  I want to provide jobs. I want to be a source of hope for high school and college students, those temporarily unemployed, and anyone else who needs a job. But if the pay were to increase, there’s no way I could provide that.

Nebraska Star Beef

How would the proposed $9 minimum wage affect your business?

It will drive up labor cost on our beef production, which will likely drive up the cost of our beef.

How does the proposed $9 minimum wage affect any hiring decisions you’re currently faced with?

It will force us to “do more with less” to keep prices from going up too radically, which is not likely to help sales…

Do you believe your business would benefit from the $9 proposed minimum wage or be adversely affected? Why?

People who earn minimum wage don’t really fit our customer demographic, and it’s hard to imagine that increasing production cost will result in a more affordable product for the higher earning customers.

The great switch: Gates trades climate control for digital dominion

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

The Big Tech billionaire once said humanity must change or perish. Now he claims we’ll survive — just as elites prepare total surveillance.

For decades, Americans have been told that climate change is an imminent apocalypse — the existential threat that justifies every intrusion into our lives, from banning gas stoves to rationing energy to tracking personal “carbon scores.”

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates helped lead that charge. He warned repeatedly that the “climate disaster” would be the greatest crisis humanity would ever face. He invested billions in green technology and demanded the world reach net-zero emissions by 2050 “to avoid catastrophe.”

The global contest is no longer over barrels and pipelines — it is over who gets to flip the digital switch.

Now, suddenly, he wants everyone to relax: Climate change “will not lead to humanity’s demise” after all.

Gates was making less of a scientific statement and more of a strategic pivot. When elites retire a crisis, it’s never because the threat is gone — it’s because a better one has replaced it. And something else has indeed arrived — something the ruling class finds more useful than fear of the weather.The same day Gates downshifted the doomsday rhetoric, Amazon announced it would pay warehouse workers $30 an hour — while laying off 30,000 people because artificial intelligence will soon do their jobs.

Climate panic was the warm-up. AI control is the main event.

The new currency of power

The world once revolved around oil and gas. Today, it revolves around the electricity demanded by server farms, the chips that power machine learning, and the data that can be used to manipulate or silence entire populations. The global contest is no longer over barrels and pipelines — it is over who gets to flip the digital switch. Whoever controls energy now controls information. And whoever controls information controls civilization.

Climate alarmism gave elites a pretext to centralize power over energy. Artificial intelligence gives them a mechanism to centralize power over people. The future battles will not be about carbon — they will be about control.

Two futures — both ending in tyranny

Americans are already being pushed into what look like two opposing movements, but both leave the individual powerless.

The first is the technocratic empire being constructed in the name of innovation. In its vision, human work will be replaced by machines, and digital permissions will subsume personal autonomy.

Government and corporations merge into a single authority. Your identity, finances, medical decisions, and speech rights become access points monitored by biometric scanners and enforced by automated gatekeepers. Every step, purchase, and opinion is tracked under the noble banner of “efficiency.”

The second is the green de-growth utopia being marketed as “compassion.” In this vision, prosperity itself becomes immoral. You will own less because “the planet” requires it. Elites will redesign cities so life cannot extend beyond a 15-minute walking radius, restrict movement to save the Earth, and ration resources to curb “excess.” It promises community and simplicity, but ultimately delivers enforced scarcity. Freedom withers when surviving becomes a collective permission rather than an individual right.

Both futures demand that citizens become manageable — either automated out of society or tightly regulated within it. The ruling class will embrace whichever version gives them the most leverage in any given moment.

Climate panic was losing its grip. AI dependency — and the obedience it creates — is far more potent.

The forgotten way

A third path exists, but it is the one today’s elites fear most: the path laid out in our Constitution. The founders built a system that assumes human beings are not subjects to be monitored or managed, but moral agents equipped by God with rights no government — and no algorithm — can override.

Hesham Elsherif / Stringer | Getty Images

That idea remains the most “disruptive technology” in history. It shattered the belief that people need kings or experts or global committees telling them how to live. No wonder elites want it erased.

Soon, you will be told you must choose: Live in a world run by machines or in a world stripped down for planetary salvation. Digital tyranny or rationed equality. Innovation without liberty or simplicity without dignity.

Both are traps.

The only way

The only future worth choosing is the one grounded in ordered liberty — where prosperity and progress exist alongside moral responsibility and personal freedom and human beings are treated as image-bearers of God — not climate liabilities, not data profiles, not replaceable hardware components.

Bill Gates can change his tune. The media can change the script. But the agenda remains the same.

They no longer want to save the planet. They want to run it, and they expect you to obey.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Why the White House restoration sent the left Into panic mode

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

Presidents have altered the White House for decades, yet only Donald Trump is treated as a vandal for privately funding the East Wing’s restoration.

Every time a president so much as changes the color of the White House drapes, the press clutches its pearls. Unless the name on the stationery is Barack Obama’s, even routine restoration becomes a national outrage.

President Donald Trump’s decision to privately fund upgrades to the White House — including a new state ballroom — has been met with the usual chorus of gasps and sneers. You’d think he bulldozed Monticello.

If a Republican preserves beauty, it’s vandalism. If a Democrat does the same, it’s ‘visionary.’

The irony is that presidents have altered and expanded the White House for more than a century. President Franklin D. Roosevelt added the East and West Wings in the middle of the Great Depression. Newspapers accused him of building a palace while Americans stood in breadlines. History now calls it “vision.”

First lady Nancy Reagan faced the same hysteria. Headlines accused her of spending taxpayer money on new china “while Americans starved.” In truth, she raised private funds after learning that the White House didn’t have enough matching plates for state dinners. She took the ridicule and refused to pass blame.

“I’m a big girl,” she told her staff. “This comes with the job.” That was dignity — something the press no longer recognizes.

A restoration, not a renovation

Trump’s project is different in every way that should matter. It costs taxpayers nothing. Not a cent. The president and a few friends privately fund the work. There’s no private pool or tennis court, no personal perks. The additions won’t even be completed until after he leaves office.

What’s being built is not indulgence — it’s stewardship. A restoration of aging rooms, worn fixtures, and century-old bathrooms that no longer function properly in the people’s house. Trump has paid for cast brass doorknobs engraved with the presidential seal, restored the carpets and moldings, and ensured that the architecture remains faithful to history.

The media’s response was mockery and accusations of vanity. They call it “grotesque excess,” while celebrating billion-dollar “climate art” projects and funneling hundreds of millions into activist causes like the No Kings movement. They lecture America on restraint while living off the largesse of billionaires.

The selective guardians of history

Where was this sudden reverence for history when rioters torched St. John’s Church — the same church where every president since James Madison has worshipped? The press called it an “expression of grief.”

Where was that reverence when mobs toppled statues of Washington, Jefferson, and Grant? Or when first lady Melania Trump replaced the Rose Garden’s lawn with a patio but otherwise followed Jackie Kennedy’s original 1962 plans in the garden’s restoration? They called that “desecration.”

If a Republican preserves beauty, it’s vandalism. If a Democrat does the same, it’s “visionary.”

The real desecration

The people shrieking about “historic preservation” care nothing for history. They hate the idea that something lasting and beautiful might be built by hands they despise. They mock craftsmanship because it exposes their own cultural decay.

The White House ballroom is not a scandal — it’s a mirror. And what it reflects is the media’s own pettiness. The ruling class that ridicules restoration is the same class that cheered as America’s monuments fell. Its members sneer at permanence because permanence condemns them.

Julia Beverly / Contributor | Getty Images

Trump’s improvements are an act of faith — in the nation’s symbols, its endurance, and its worth. The outrage over a privately funded renovation says less about him than it does about the journalists who mistake destruction for progress.

The real desecration isn’t happening in the East Wing. It’s happening in the newsrooms that long ago tore up their own foundation — truth — and never bothered to rebuild it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Trump’s secret war in the Caribbean EXPOSED — It’s not about drugs

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

The president’s moves in Venezuela, Guyana, and Colombia aren’t about drugs. They’re about re-establishing America’s sovereignty across the Western Hemisphere.

For decades, we’ve been told America’s wars are about drugs, democracy, or “defending freedom.” But look closer at what’s unfolding off the coast of Venezuela, and you’ll see something far more strategic taking shape. Donald Trump’s so-called drug war isn’t about fentanyl or cocaine. It’s about control — and a rebirth of American sovereignty.

The aim of Trump’s ‘drug war’ is to keep the hemisphere’s oil, minerals, and manufacturing within the Western family and out of Beijing’s hands.

The president understands something the foreign policy class forgot long ago: The world doesn’t respect apologies. It respects strength.

While the global elites in Davos tout the Great Reset, Trump is building something entirely different — a new architecture of power based on regional independence, not global dependence. His quiet campaign in the Western Hemisphere may one day be remembered as the second Monroe Doctrine.

Venezuela sits at the center of it all. It holds the world’s largest crude oil reserves — oil perfectly suited for America’s Gulf refineries. For years, China and Russia have treated Venezuela like a pawn on their chessboard, offering predatory loans in exchange for control of those resources. The result has been a corrupt, communist state sitting in our own back yard. For too long, Washington shrugged. Not any more.The naval exercises in the Caribbean, the sanctions, the patrols — they’re not about drug smugglers. They’re about evicting China from our hemisphere.

Trump is using the old “drug war” playbook to wage a new kind of war — an economic and strategic one — without firing a shot at our actual enemies. The goal is simple: Keep the hemisphere’s oil, minerals, and manufacturing within the Western family and out of Beijing’s hands.

Beyond Venezuela

Just east of Venezuela lies Guyana, a country most Americans couldn’t find on a map a year ago. Then ExxonMobil struck oil, and suddenly Guyana became the newest front in a quiet geopolitical contest. Washington is helping defend those offshore platforms, build radar systems, and secure undersea cables — not for charity, but for strategy. Control energy, data, and shipping lanes, and you control the future.

Moreover, Colombia — a country once defined by cartels — is now positioned as the hinge between two oceans and two continents. It guards the Panama Canal and sits atop rare-earth minerals every modern economy needs. Decades of American presence there weren’t just about cocaine interdiction; they were about maintaining leverage over the arteries of global trade. Trump sees that clearly.

PEDRO MATTEY / Contributor | Getty Images

All of these recent news items — from the military drills in the Caribbean to the trade negotiations — reflect a new vision of American power. Not global policing. Not endless nation-building. It’s about strategic sovereignty.

It’s the same philosophy driving Trump’s approach to NATO, the Middle East, and Asia. We’ll stand with you — but you’ll stand on your own two feet. The days of American taxpayers funding global security while our own borders collapse are over.

Trump’s Monroe Doctrine

Critics will call it “isolationism.” It isn’t. It’s realism. It’s recognizing that America’s strength comes not from fighting other people’s wars but from securing our own energy, our own supply lines, our own hemisphere. The first Monroe Doctrine warned foreign powers to stay out of the Americas. The second one — Trump’s — says we’ll defend them, but we’ll no longer be their bank or their babysitter.

Historians may one day mark this moment as the start of a new era — when America stopped apologizing for its own interests and started rebuilding its sovereignty, one barrel, one chip, and one border at a time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Antifa isn’t “leaderless” — It’s an organized machine of violence

Jeff J Mitchell / Staff | Getty Images

The mob rises where men of courage fall silent. The lesson from Portland, Chicago, and other blue cities is simple: Appeasing radicals doesn’t buy peace — it only rents humiliation.

Parts of America, like Portland and Chicago, now resemble occupied territory. Progressive city governments have surrendered control to street militias, leaving citizens, journalists, and even federal officers to face violent anarchists without protection.

Take Portland, where Antifa has terrorized the city for more than 100 consecutive nights. Federal officers trying to keep order face nightly assaults while local officials do nothing. Independent journalists, such as Nick Sortor, have even been arrested for documenting the chaos. Sortor and Blaze News reporter Julio Rosas later testified at the White House about Antifa’s violence — testimony that corporate media outlets buried.

Antifa is organized, funded, and emboldened.

Chicago offers the same grim picture. Federal agents have been stalked, ambushed, and denied backup from local police while under siege from mobs. Calls for help went unanswered, putting lives in danger. This is more than disorder; it is open defiance of federal authority and a violation of the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause.

A history of violence

For years, the legacy media and left-wing think tanks have portrayed Antifa as “decentralized” and “leaderless.” The opposite is true. Antifa is organized, disciplined, and well-funded. Groups like Rose City Antifa in Oregon, the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club in Texas, and Jane’s Revenge operate as coordinated street militias. Legal fronts such as the National Lawyers Guild provide protection, while crowdfunding networks and international supporters funnel money directly to the movement.

The claim that Antifa lacks structure is a convenient myth — one that’s cost Americans dearly.

History reminds us what happens when mobs go unchecked. The French Revolution, Weimar Germany, Mao’s Red Guards — every one began with chaos on the streets. But it wasn’t random. Today’s radicals follow the same playbook: Exploit disorder, intimidate opponents, and seize moral power while the state looks away.

Dismember the dragon

The Trump administration’s decision to designate Antifa a domestic terrorist organization was long overdue. The label finally acknowledged what citizens already knew: Antifa functions as a militant enterprise, recruiting and radicalizing youth for coordinated violence nationwide.

But naming the threat isn’t enough. The movement’s financiers, organizers, and enablers must also face justice. Every dollar that funds Antifa’s destruction should be traced, seized, and exposed.

AFP Contributor / Contributor | Getty Images

This fight transcends party lines. It’s not about left versus right; it’s about civilization versus anarchy. When politicians and judges excuse or ignore mob violence, they imperil the republic itself. Americans must reject silence and cowardice while street militias operate with impunity.

Antifa is organized, funded, and emboldened. The violence in Portland and Chicago is deliberate, not spontaneous. If America fails to confront it decisively, the price won’t just be broken cities — it will be the erosion of the republic itself.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.