As another round of coordinated minimum wage protests occurred the other day around the country, the consequences of minimum wage hikes — including lost jobs, reduced hours, and business closures — are playing out in real time. To bring some economic reality into the national discussion on the #Fightfor15, the Employment Policies Institute (EPI) released four new mini-documentaries today featuring victims of dramatic minimum wage increases. EPI has documented hundreds of these outcomes on its Faces of $15 website. Four of these stories of lost jobs and business closing are featured in the mini-documentary videos below.
1. The Almost Perfect Bookstore in Sacramento was forced to close because it could not absorb the increased costs of California’s forthcoming (far from perfect) $15 state minimum wage (watch video above).
2. ARGYLEHaus of Apparel in San Fernando (CA) is leaving the state for Nevada as a consequence of California’s pending minimum wage increase to $15 an hour (watch video above).
3. The Del Rio Diner in Brooklyn was forced to close because the owner couldn’t pass along the costs of New York’s rising minimum wage to his blue collar customers in the form of higher menu prices (watch video above).
4. Sterling’s Family Childcare in Oakland (CA) has been forced to cut staff and hours as well as scale back a free rides service because of the costs associated with Oakland’s minimum wage increase (watch video above).
MP: It’s really too bad that there isn’t some economic theory or some economic laws that could have predicted these inevitable adverse outcomes from a government price control that artificially raises labor costs by diktat ...
This first appeared at AEIdeas.
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