By Kevin Judge | June 04, 2019
The other day I passed a McDonald’s, where the sign beneath the golden arches usually has the latest meal deal, instead revealed they are offering $11 an hour jobs to start. McDonald’s is generally considered the poster boy for minimum wage jobs. The name comes up almost every time the minimum wage is discussed.
Here in New Jersey, Governor Murphy’s signed an increase of our minimum wage with great fanfare and self-congratulation earlier in the year. The mandatory wage rate will reach $15 an hour in 2024, phased in gradually. The next increase is will be next month to $10 an hour.
I guess Micky D’s didn’t get the memo! They are ahead of schedule! Maybe they should hold off and save themselves some money!
That would be ridiculous of course, as is the political charade that politicians play with the minimum wage. McDonald’s is increasing their wage because they need the employees now, and attracting them is worth the increase pay to their operations.
Politicians seem oblivious to the fact that setting a minimum wage does not create a single new job worth paying that rate. It may, in fact, price some job seekers out of the labor market. The rising wages that we are seeing, particular for minorities and low income earners, have nothing to do with government mandates. They DO have a lot to do with the pro-business, pro economic growth policies of the Trump Administration. Sad to say, our Governor and his fellow Democrats in that control the legislature vigorously oppose those policies and are hell bent on undermining them.
The Tax Foundation, a leading non-profit research group, currently ranks New Jersey dead last out of the 50 states in being business friendly. That is hardly a surprise to me. Ask any smaller business owner here if NJ is friendly to business and you will get an earful about taxes and regulations. They are put upon by every level of government: state, county, local and during the Obama years the Federal. The year and a half of the Murphy Administration has been one tax increase or regulatory mandate after another.
When I was growing up New Jersey was a low tax state. We didn’t have a state income tax until I was in college. Property taxes were low. Somehow the state managed to function, even without the additional revenue that has come from the introduction of a lottery and gambling.
Morris County was filled with corporate headquarters of large companies that had fled the high property and income taxes of New York and Connecticut. Most of those companies have since left for friendlier territory. Based on the stats from the Taxation Foundation, it is no wonder!
People of the left treat businesses as if they are extensions of government and need to be dictated to about employment and wages. And it is true that people do not start a business to create jobs, but they are a very happy by product!
If the government mandate approach worked, the Soviet Union might not reside in the “ash heap of history”, as forecasted by a President nicknamed the Gipper. Once in a rare while we get a President who puts his full faith in the private sector to define the economy and this is what we get. Economic growth, low unemployment and rising wages!
Everytime.