Earlier this week, the King County Council passed an ordinance (a “living wage” mandate) that increases the minimum wage for “long-term county employees and the employees working for companies that hold contracts with the county of $100,000 or more.” The ordinance increases the minimum wage to $10 per hour in 2015. Between 2017 and 2021, the ordinance phases in a $15 per hour minimum wage, “based on company size and whether health benefits are offered.” Additionally, by 2025, all direct and indirect employees will receive a minimum wage of $18.13 per hour regardless of size.
According to the Washington Policy Center, “the increased wage mandate comes at the same time King County is proposing to cut more than 500 full-time county jobs as part of an effort to reduce the County’s 2015-2016 budget deficit.” The expected job cuts would be “”the largest workforce reduction in County history,” according to the County.
That’s a lot of people who won’t be earning any wage… no less a “living wage.”
AmericanBearII says
Idiocy at its best! Increase wages paid by others, and cut jobs, reducing wages paid by the County. Who elected these idiots?
Bruce Grubb says
Get it thought your thick head people, actually real world unbiased studies shows this DOES NOT HAPPEN.
Doug Wotton says
the lover of Obama put these dipstick in office just grand right posting in here like typing to the wall 🙂
George Goss says
Doesn’t surprise me. Simple cause and effect. Democrats never could see past the next company payroll when going after votes.
Bruce Grubb says
Except they are raising minimum wage for PRIVATE companies while cutting GOVERNMENT jobs. There is NO direct connection between the two and therefor no cause and effect.
DR1980 says
Actually, you are incorrect. The government should not neccasarilly be dictating what private industry can pay when it is in fact entirely afloat because of the wages of those privately employed. Further, this minimum wage increase is aimed at those private businesses that are working directly in support of the local government, who are being paid by the government with money supplied by private industry through taxes. This further begs the question: Are the layoffs at the government level a direct result of minimum wage increase, i.e. elimating jobs in order to pay for those contractors with mandated wage increases? So you see, there is cause and effect and there is a direct connection between the two.
Bruce Grubb says
By this morally bankrupt logic the government should not necessarily be dictating what private industry does regarding anything. In otherwords as it was in the late 19 century and early 20th centuries when the National Guard could be called out to KILL WOMEN AND CHILDREN because their family wanted a working wage ( Ludlow Massacre) and there was NO safety in any of the food or medicine you bought.
DR1980 says
Last I checked, this was the 21st century. Bringing up historical examples from several decades past is not the best way to prove your point on current day issues. Actually, it stabs of desperation.
Further, I find your comment about Swedes to be offensive and deragatory. Do you infer that Swedish people were more apt to be rotten, disease filled and medically impure…?
In all seriousness, I find your drivel dry and unsubstantiated. It is obvious that you troll conservative websites, not out of any great love of liberty and debate but to force your narrowly defined world view on a group of people you feel beneath your contempt.
Try being a classic liberal for once. You might find being human is actually enjoyable.
Bruce Grubb says
But this is where the whole ‘government should not interfere in private business’ mindset leads to. As for this being the 21st century these sort of things are happening TODAY in other countries so trying to hide behind the ‘it’s history’ mask doesn’t work.
In fact, homeopathic medicine with its poor quality control and snake oil claims operates TODAY in the United States and that is from the _18th century_ .
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”- George Santayana
DR1980 says
Really? No one has said their shouldn’t be some government regulatory guidelines in place. That is absurd. However, your argument still lacks substance. To say that private industry didn’t exploit workers in centuries gone by is also absurd. However, equally absurd is the notion that todays worker is just as exploited now as they were 200 years ago. If anything, unions have become the monster they vowed to fight. They hold private industry hostage to the demands of the workers they claim to represent.
As for other countires around the world….not our concern, at least for the purposes of this discussion. We’re not discussing other countries or even other states. We’re discussing the State of Washington here in the United States. Again, another straw man enters the fight.
Bruce Grubb says
Todays worker is just as exploited now as they were 200 years ago but in different ways — see the mammoth lawsuit McDonald’s is having in California and Michigan regarding supposedly messing with the wages (the New York suit was settled)
Unions are on life support in the private sector (a pathetic 11.3% of ALL workers) but are king in the public sector (teachers, firefighters, police, etc) so the old McCarthyist claim the unions “hold private industry hostage to the demands of the workers” is BS. Heck it was BS in 1983 when union participation was first documented …at a meager 20.1%
Meanwhile the CEO to worker pay ratio has gone from a modest 50:1 in the 1980s to a staggering 250:1 in 2000. The investors have woken up but it is still at a insane 200:1 ratio.
As long as the ‘we have to compete in the global marketplace’ song and dance is presented as an argument as to keeping wages in the US low then what happens in other countries to keep their wages low DOES matter.
Vic R says
Complete Stupidity. Minimum wage jobs are not intended to be family supportive jobs. They are there as stepping stones to better jobs as a person increases their skillsets. This is another typical Liberal act designed to keep the working class in poverty rather than help them raise to better paying jobs through better educational opportunities. They will blame the GOP when companies start laying people off or making them go part time…Guess who pays for these increases? Not the companies but the consumers…Bad for everyone….but it’s all done under the guise of charity. Come get me communist trolls…I know you’re in here. Start the name calling …
pen44 says
Exactly, Vic R…..but, the Libs are all about big ideas in social engineering, which always fail because Liberal Regressives cannot think past their noses to the consequences of their “feel good” daydreams.
Vic R says
You got that right Pen44!!
Bruce Grubb says
They are cutting COUNTY JOBS which are paid by a little thing called TAXES. The fact they are cutting 500 jobs suggests the county GOVERNMENT there was bloated beyond belief. Also I have yet to see any government job city, county, state, or federal that pays the minimum wage; they are usually many times greater.
Bruce Grubb says
“Minimum wage jobs are not intended to be family supportive jobs.” BZZZ WRONG.
A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more; otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation. (An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations Adam Smith March 9, 1776)
“We stand for a living wage. Wages are subnormal if they fail to provide a living for those who devote their time and energy to industrial occupations. The monetary equivalent of a living wage varies according to local conditions, but must include enough to secure the elements of a normal standard of living–a standard high enough to make morality possible, to provide for education and recreation, to care for immature members of the family, to maintain the family during periods of sickness, and to permit of reasonable saving for old age.” (President Theodore Roosevelt August 1912)
“No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By living wages, I mean more than a bare subsistence level — I mean the wages of a decent living.” (1933, Statement on National Industrial Recovery Act)
“All but the hopelessly reactionary will agree that to conserve our primary resources of man power, government must have some control over maximum hours, minimum wages, the evil of child labor and the exploitation of unorganized labor.” (1937, Message to Congress upon introduction of the Fair Labor Standards Act)
A minimum wage has ALWAYS been about supporting a family.
As for the other nonsense PEER REVIEWED articles shows that raising the minimum wage in of itself does not result in lay offs.
David Card and Alan B. Krueger, “Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast-Food Industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania,”American Economic Review, Volume 84, no. 4 (September 1994), pp. 774-775.
Card and Krueger (2000) “Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast-Food Industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania: Reply”American Economic Review, Volume 90 No. 5. pg 1397-1420
“Little or no evidence of an adverse employment effect remains in the empirical research record, once the effects of publication selection are removed.” – Hristos Doucouliagos & T. D. Stanley, 2009. “Publication Selection Bias in Minimum-Wage Research? A Meta-Regression Analysis,” British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 47(2), pages 406-428, 06.
The November 2011 Hirsch, Kaufman, Zelenska paper “Minimum Wage Channels of Adjustment” found no “significant effect of the minimum wage increases on employment or hours over the years [studied]”.
John Schmitt’s February 2013 “Why Does the Minimum Wage Have No Discernible Effect on Employment?” stated “two recent meta-studies analyzing the research conducted since the early 1990s conclude that the minimum wage has little or no discernible effect on the employment prospects of low-wage workers.”
The unbiased scholar research is in and the claim is bogus.
DR1980 says
You have a commanding knowledge of carefully picked informational tidbits. As a matter of fact, you seem to be everywhere, commenting on everything….
Capitalism! says
You must not be a job creator hu Bruce? A wage is what your worth is to your employer, your value is what you bring to your employer…get some skills and demand a higher wage, it’s called capitalism and supply and demand Bruce, it’s what makes us still the only Superpower left in this world!
Bruce Grubb says
This is total garbage to anyone who knows the horrible conditions that existed in the US in the 19th century and early 20th century. Or would you prefer to still live in a country where the National Guard could indiscriminately kill WOMEN and CHILDREN of families simply wanted to be paid a living wage? Look up Ludlow Massacre some time.
Bruce Grubb says
You are clueless. As the GIlded Age showed employers would pay is next to nothing is their weren’t laws on the books.
Jill Edgerton says
You’re welcome to move out of state dummy. No one is forcing you to stay here. There’s a reason Seattle is one of the most prosperous cities in the nation, and it sure as hell isn’t due to conservatard policies.
inquisitive says
These folks are retarded. Could not rub two brain cells together if they tried.
Lou says
Anyone with an IQ larger than their shoe size should have seen this coming!!!! Note to Libs: Don’t be so open-minded that your brain falls out.
Bruce Grubb says
And how is cutting GOVERNMENT jobs a liberal position? Remember they are to “cut more than 500 full-time county jobs” CONSERVATIVES are the ones who want SMALL government which mean you don’t need all those people therefore CUT government jobs! So explain to us how the cutting of GOVERNMENT (and therefore the job in government) is a liberal position.
tensor says
So, when government operates like a business, cutting jobs to re-align services with reality, that’s bad because…? The minimum wage increases are small, and to be implemented very slowly, over a long time; the layoffs are coming much sooner. Cause and effect are somewhat less than clear.
(We all know you guys will never, ever, not under any circumstances, praise a government whose voters freely elect liberals and Democrats, but you might want to make that fact a little less brazenly obvious. Just sayin’.)