EditorRemember when Hillary Clinton was the “more moderate” of the two Democrats running for the party’s nomination?
As with other issues that Mrs. Clinton has changed her mind on (like free trade deals, deporting illegals, gay marriage, etc.), it appears she is still “evolving” her position on another liberal hot-button issue–that of how high the federal minimum wage should be.
On whether or not she supports a $15 federal minimum wage, according to SEIU boss Mary Kay Henry, Mrs. Clinton has been convinced that, instead of a more moderate $12 minimum wage that she supported until very recently, she now likes the sounds of $15 a whole lot better.
Henry, whose union has endorsed Clinton, said they’ve discussed the issue with her and that she supports a $15 hourly wage for fast-food, home-care and child-care workers.
“By the time she’s elected to office, we will be able to generate the kind of momentum that the federal government will feel the same wind at their backs that Cuomo and Brown have felt,” Henry predicted.
Clinton and SEIU’s Henry—whose union launched its 2009 plan to unionize the fast-food industry in 2012 and has successfully gotten New York and California wage measures pushed through—have been allied against Clinton’s rival Bernie Sanders since the SEIU endorsed Clinton last fall.
Whether Clinton’s flip-flop on the minimum wage is real, or merely populist pandering, is yet to be determined.
However, as Buzzfeed notes, back in 2009, when Clinton was Secretary of State, her department did nothing to help lift wages when the workers in Haiti wanted $5 per day.
In fact, the Clinton State Department actually intervened to hold the wages down:
A deputy chief of mission, David E. Lindwall, said the $5 per day minimum “did not take economic reality into account” but was a populist measure aimed at appealing to “the unemployed and underpaid masses.”
Like the question whether Clinton is merely engaging in populist pandering, whether or not enough Democratic primary voters buy Clinton’s “evolving” position on wages to give her another win against Sanders is also yet to be determined.
Minimum Wage Hikes (and actually its very existance) are more of a panacea than any type of “fix” to anyone’s economic outlook.
The people who look to minimum wage raises as a way to improve their own economic standing are the very people who actually bear the brunt of the problems generated by them. These people seem not to understand that ALL increases in a company’s cost structure are immediately and ultimately passed through to the Consumer … whoever they may be.
Costs for everything rise to meet the “new normal” wage structure.
Minimum Wage being pressed to higher numbers simply means that, for a time, employers will freeze hiring and try to do more with less. People and Companies will be slower to expand so less jobs become available.
Currently the Economy is doing Poorly, the crisis of enforced Healthcare (ACA), the problem of Increased Regulations, the overall Deflation of the Dollar, the truly Horrible Trade Treaties … among other items … are having a negative impact on hiring. Although the Government offers a skewed version of reality that indicates that there is “no Inflation”, the truth is, anyone who honestly shops at a grocery store can tell you that Prices have jumped tremendously over the last few/several years … so the conversation about inflation is simply false … for the common people.
Despite the rosy conversations about the economy and the jobs and jobless issues coming out of Washington DC and various Pundits, Our Nation remains in a very difficult situation. Worse, most of the rest of the World remains in a very difficult situation.
The concept of raising the minimum wage sounds nice but is simply another way of distracting people from the issue of how to fix this. The Romans referred to it as “Bread and Circuses”.