I saw the following astute and alert analysis on a friend’s Facebook page today and replied in kind.
In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with looking into the minimum wage in CT to see if it helps people get a job or somehow impairs them from getting a job in CT. It is worth a study. It appears that this may be a taboo entitlement situation to many. It could be possible to keep those at the present minimum wage and hire the new people at a lower minimum wage. I am no expert… I just look at things from different points of view.
I agree with you sort of!
The biggest problem was on or about 1992 when “industry” took a similar look and saw that union jobs had hit a magic 16. The average person with 16 years in a factory was making 16 dollars per hour.
Bosses all over this country decided they needed to cut that down to 10/hr at the end of someone’s career, and only minimum wage at the beginning.
Except for the bosses’ bosses; NO ONE liked that idea.
So instead they downsized/outsourced/closed every single plant in this nation one by one. They hired “middlemen” at about 15 per hour to lead entire teams of people making just a dollar or two more per hour than the minimum wage instead of the 16 that they panicked about in the first place.
Now that almost everyone makes just a couple bucks more than minimum wage they’re panicking again.
Do we want the minimum wage to be only 2/3 what it was last year?
1/3?
This is a very cynical proposition.
These are most cynical times.
Ironically, President Clinton pushed through a pay increase for each new President (Bush then Obama then who…) of about 3/2’s.
At a time when the US economy must shrink 2/3’s if it will survive???
We are in grave danger.