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Job-killing wage mandates set to sweep the country
December 2021 · Michael Saltsman and Rebekah Paxton · Orange County Register
More than 80 states and localities will raise minimum wages on New Year’s Day, an ill-timed mandate if there ever was one. Inflation-linked increases are particularly steep this year, rising nearly five percent on average in more than 55 states and localities that raise wages with the Consumer Price Index (as compared to 1.7 percent last year). In left-of-center locales, these scheduled increases are no longer sufficient:… -
Lorena Gonzalez once again puts union power ahead of workers
May 2021 · Michael Saltsman and Rebekah Paxton · Orange County Register
Leave it to Lorena Gonzalez to name a bill the FAST Recovery Act even though it would slow the state’s economic rebound. Gonzalez, D-Organized Labor, is best known as the author of Assembly Bill 5, which gained national notoriety after it stripped countless freelancers of their incomes. Voters in 2020 delivered a resounding verdict on the law’s applicability to “gig workers,” approving the Proposition 22 ballot measure which… -
Ending the tip credit brings pay cuts, not raises
March 2021 · Rebekah Paxton · Washington Examiner
Here’s a tip that restaurant workers don’t want. The Raise the Wage Act, which will likely return as a standalone bill before Congress, would eliminate the employer credit for tip income and raise the minimum wage for tipped workers to $15 an hour (a 600% increase). But for many restaurant servers and bartenders, this would actually mean taking a pay cut if they aren’t included in the hundreds of thousands… -
Biden Destroys Restaurants to Save Them
January 2021 · Michael Saltsman · Wall Street Journal
Abolishing the tipped minimum wage would wipe out the benefit of his Covid grants. Joe Biden proposes $15 billion in relief grants for America’s Covid-crushed businesses. But he also wants to mandate a new minimum wage that for many restaurants would wipe out the benefit and then some. Restaurants shed some six million jobs in the first two months of the pandemic. As a consequence of continued… -
Biden Ignores Evidence on Impact of $15 Minimum Wage
November 2020 · Michael Saltsman · Morning Consult
Asked at the most recent presidential debate about the wisdom of a $15 federal minimum wage, Joe Biden dismissed potential consequences: “There’s no evidence that when you raise the minimum wage, businesses go out of business.” As the candidate might say, that’s malarkey. The minimum wage is one of the most-studied topics in economics, with reams of research papers dating back to the creation of a federal standard in… -
Opinion: $15 minimum wage would ruin economic recovery
October 2020 · Michael Saltsman and Rebekah Paxton · The Detroit News
The coronavirus pandemic left millions jobless. Instead of getting Americans back to work, Democrats propose reviving the economy by more than doubling the minimum wage. A new analysis shows why this strategy will backfire. This unprecedented increase to the minimum wage is a key component of the Raise the Wage Act, a bill that passed in the House of Representatives just last year. The components of the legislation, which were…