Is there a "blue wave" coming? It sure did look like it back in January. Democrats boasted a twelve point lead just five months ago. That lead is now just FOUR POINTS. You can't even really call that a lead when you factor in margin of error.
BUT, in case the "wave" is real, it's absolutely crucial that we educate ourselves with the agenda they'll start to push. To conquer the "wave" let's first learn how to surf their issues. We've seen a lot of talk lately about free healthcare and free college tuition, but this morning I want to talk real quickly about the minimum wage. A fifteen dollar minimum wage has been a staple issue for people like Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker… I could go on, but the progressive crazy list is too long to fit into a three hour radio show.
The federal minimum wage is $7.25. Progressive lawmakers want to effectively DOUBLE that. What effect might that have? I mean, you've probably heard a conservative media pundit or even a right leaning politician claim that jobs would suffer if this were to become reality, but is there any real data to back that up? If McDonalds is suddenly forced to pay fifteen dollars an hour to ALL their workers, would they do as we expect and begin laying off employees to compensate for the higher wages? That's what those of us on the right claim, but is that reality?
Kiosks will outnumber employees in every business from fast food, grocery stores, retail, gas stations… everywhere.
Noah Williams, an economics professor at the University of Wisconsin, crunched the numbers in two states to find out what effect raising the minimum wage had on jobs. He used fast food employment job numbers - which is the standard for measuring low wage industry job changes - in both Minnesota and his home state of Wisconsin. From 2010 to 2014, fast food employment in both states grew at the same rate, but from 2014 until today Wisconsin began outpacing Minnesota by over four percentage points. Employment is dropping in Minnesota and rising in Wisconsin. So what's going on?
The problems began in 2014. That's the same year that Minnesota began to implement a minimum wage increase. Wages went up to 9.65 per hour for large employers and 7.87 per hour for small employers. If you consider 15 dollars per hour as the ultimate progressive goal, what Minnesota did is actually considered pretty minor. But look what just those small tweaks did to employment. Now think about what would happen at FIFTEEN. Kiosks will outnumber employees in every business from fast food, grocery stores, retail, gas stations… everywhere.
This is just one of the many crazy progressive issues we need to be knowledgeable about in the next few weeks, months and years. Progressive and socialist principles rely on ignorance to succeed. It's up to us to deny them that.