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2021-02-27 Home Front: Politix
Hawley to introduce $15 minimum wage hike for big businesses
The senator is a practitioner of populist jujitsu.
[Washington Examiner] Republican Sen. Josh Hawley is putting his weight behind raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour — but with a twist.

Unlike proposals from Democrats that would raise the minimum wage across the board over the next five years, Hawley's proposed legislation would target only those companies with revenues in excess of $1 billion.

"For decades, the wages of everyday, working Americans have remained stagnate while monopoly corporations have consolidated industry after industry, securing record profits for CEOs and investment bankers," the Missouri senator said in a statement. "Mega-corporations can afford to pay their workers $15 an hour, and it’s long past time they do so, but this should not come at the expense of small businesses already struggling to make it."

The biggest corporations in America can afford to pay their workers $15 an hour. Raise the minimum wage for big business, not small business
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) February 23, 2021

The bill would also index the minimum wage to inflation after reaching $15 an hour in 2025.

The proposed legislation would operate in tandem with another bill Hawley intends to introduce — the Blue Collar Bonus. That bill would provide a tax credit to those who make less than the median hourly wage of $16.15 an hour, also indexed to inflation in the future. The credit would be "worth 50 percent of the difference between the median wage and the worker’s hourly wage rate."
Posted by Hupineck Joluger3758 2021-02-27 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11128 views ]  Top

#1 wonder how long before he has an "accident"?
Posted by Chris 2021-02-27 01:03||   2021-02-27 01:03|| Front Page Top

#2 Soviet Central Planning!
Posted by Procopius2k 2021-02-27 06:47||   2021-02-27 06:47|| Front Page Top

#3 Sheer lunacy & stupidity.
Posted by Clem 2021-02-27 06:59||   2021-02-27 06:59|| Front Page Top

#4 Make it even tougher on small business there Joshy. It's tough enough now to hire. Don't count on my vote dumbass.
Posted by Spoter B 2021-02-27 08:25||   2021-02-27 08:25|| Front Page Top

#5 Did you read the article? Small businesses make greater than $1 Billion annually?
Posted by Frank G 2021-02-27 08:39||   2021-02-27 08:39|| Front Page Top

#6 Frank this will have an effect on small businesses. They have to buy from large businesses. Their costs will increase.
Posted by Deacon Blues 2021-02-27 09:11||   2021-02-27 09:11|| Front Page Top

#7 Ask any small business owner or manager. Go to the local liquor store and ask the boss about the minimum wage. Without drastic changes, someone is going to suffer, be it the consumer with higher prices or the laid-off/fired worker.
Posted by Clem 2021-02-27 09:14||   2021-02-27 09:14|| Front Page Top

#8 Comparative advantage folks. Big business already has a comparative advantage due to economics of scale. By raising big business labor costs, small business has a better chance of competing with big business on a level field.

The fly in the ointment is low tariff imports where labor rates are not set by US policy or economics. Luckily most small business is in the service industry where imports don't directly compete.
Posted by Hupineck Joluger3758 2021-02-27 09:58||   2021-02-27 09:58|| Front Page Top

#9 when can we see a maximum wage?
Posted by irish rage boy  2021-02-27 10:29||   2021-02-27 10:29|| Front Page Top

#10 All beside the point.

Y'all are being played for suckers by your old GOP Chamber of Commerce liars and cucks.

If you or anyone, Sens. Hawley or Sanders or whoever, really care about raising low-end wages, then by far the best and most effective policies are those that create tightness in the low-end labor market.

The available research shows again and again that minimum wage levels make next to no difference to overall employment levels or inflation. Other policies and other competitive conditions drive those outcomes.

What does make a difference in this country is illegal immigration. Economist George Borjas of Harvard has done the most work on this subject and his studies demonstrate the effects of illegal immigration in the US to include not only high unemployment for unskilled native-born US workers but also a major hit -- he estimates it at 9% -- to low-end native born workers' incomes.

Sanders and Hawley and their colleagues should support building the wall, deporting the illegals and halting this insane importation of crap wage illiterate workers from abroad.

Stop being tools. Focus on the real problems, which are importing unemployment through our retarded immigration policy and allowing unscrupulous companies to skirt the anti-monopoly laws.
Posted by Spats Bonaparte9653 2021-02-27 10:37||   2021-02-27 10:37|| Front Page Top

#11 No reason any "progressive" should have a problem with Hawley's proposal. Isn't "those who have more should pay more" the very heart and soul of "progressivism?"
Posted by M. Murcek 2021-02-27 10:59||   2021-02-27 10:59|| Front Page Top

#12 Really. That is interesting.
Here's my current plan. Not that I'm that big, mind you.

I will lose half my employees, the ones who help me do the blue collar aspect. I will be back heavy lifting mostly by myself. I'm guessing maybe 5 years off of my life's mobility, if I don't get hurt first. On the white collar side, I will be down to part timers, so that will be me doing that part as well. That means more time at work. Shit, I mean new home. Maybe the kids can come visit sometimes.

That is because every single step in the supply chain in front of me, what shoddy supply train it is since 2 Weeks Y'all!, is going to get guffing zapped by this.

No more high schoolers or hard times projects where I can teach front and back office life skills.

I get outpriced, doors get shuttered, I go fishing for food, good luck finding a buyer in this market. Big Boys go in the red and its all 'Too Big to Fail! Food Desert! Wacka Wacka Wacka!' and poof $Trillion aid package.

$1Billion used to be real money. $Billion Gross, that is a lot of organizations. Those are your regional competitors to, uhem, Mega-Corps. Lose them, and guess where you have to shop. Guess what happens to prices without serious competition.

And the Big Boys, good luck getting a job there. They are going animaniacs with inventory, stocking, and check out.

Tax credit, getttautahere. That means I carry the expense until Fed decides it pays me back. That can be sooner, with payroll, or annual with income. I think I saw somewhere expected 1.5% inflation adjustment per year - that is wildly optimistic, more so if this becomes law and Fed shores up Big Box with $Trillions.

If Bernie's Law, or this Bernie Lite, is a good idea, Big Box would have done so. If the idea is just and moral, there would not need to be a law.
Posted by swksvolFF 2021-02-27 11:03||   2021-02-27 11:03|| Front Page Top

#13 It's a publicity stunt. I don't believe that Hawley believes it will pass but they might call his bluff and it could backfire big time. This is an ill advised move on his part and lowers his credibility considerably.
Posted by Abu Uluque 2021-02-27 11:54||   2021-02-27 11:54|| Front Page Top

#14 Bluff, call them on it and propose $50 an hour. Watch them dance.
Posted by Procopius2k 2021-02-27 12:17||   2021-02-27 12:17|| Front Page Top

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