A deal to raise California's minimum wage to 15 dollars an hour by 2022 was reached Monday by Gov. Jerry Brown and state legislators, making the nation's largest state the first to lift base earnings to that level and propelling a campaign to lift the pay floor nationally. The increase will boost the wages of about 6.5 million California residents, or 43% of the state’s workforce, who earn less than 15 dollars, according to worker group Fight for $15. The proposal had been headed to a statewide referendum. It's now expected to be approved by the state assembly. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/03/28/california-raises-minimum-wage-15-hour/82348622/
Minimum-wage jobs seem to be transforming away from being the first jobs that high-school kids get to get their foot in the door of the world of work, to being low-end career jobs for people who in some cases are trying to support families. So changes like this raise in the minimum wage, and rising health care costs to employers, while well-intentioned, just raise the cost to employers of hiring somebody, contributing to a growing unemployment rate among less-skilled youth and to their growing difficulty breaking into the job-market at all. The result will be minimum-wage jobs turning into a different kind of job, harder to get and demanding more skills.
This article claims that California has no idea what it's getting into, because it can't; there is simply no experience from which to learn, arguing that that a "$15-an-hour national minimum wage would put us in uncharted waters, and risk undesirable and unintended consequences," although it might be okay in certain high-wage cities and states. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...58cc6a-f68e-11e5-a3ce-f06b5ba21f33_story.html
Agreed. The result will be a society of career minimum wage workers with no chance for new workers to start. A secondary effect will be rapid inflation. As entry-level workers leave the area, and the remaining workers can afford to pay more (since they will no longer be people making the old minimum wage) prices will rise to compensate, and to support companies like Wal-Mart and Target which now have to pay more for labor. And rather than see this as a problem, I fear the solution politicians will "discover" is to raise the minimum wage even further, so all those career minimum wage workers can live comfortably as prices inflate. As long as the rise in minimum wage is just slightly ahead of inflation, this can work - at least until the government realizes that hyperinflation has a few bad effects.
wait until companies roll over to salaries and wipe out wages. at $8.00 an hour that is approximately 1300$ a month(full-time) without any deductions(tax and such). compared to 15$/h which is approximately $2400 a month. with salary, i can give you 1200$ a month and still have my business operate.
