[mr penguin]

This morning's paper says the Michigan Democrats want to raise Michigan's minimum wage to a nationwide high of $10 per hour by 2010. They further want to require employers to provide health insurance for all employees. The second proposal is to force utilities to reduce rates by 20%. Who thinks this is a good idea?

[michigan83]

This morning's paper says the Michigan Democrats want to raise Michigan's minimum wage to a nationwide high of $10 per hour by 2010.

Is there a minimum IQ requirement to be a state representative?

Any decent economics professor can explain why a higher minimum wage doesn't work in about 3 minutes. And then you say "oh, yeah, that makes sense. Huh." And that's the end of it.

But, hey, I'm sure they would get plenty of votes for doing something like that. Which is why Ben Franklin said, "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."

[MTUCache]

Bad, bad, bad idea... might as well just unionize the whole state and let the UAW handle negotiations with employers. You'd be crippling businesses that are already struggling to survive. And who would you be really helping? Those people who are already getting subsidies or assistance otherwise?

You'd be much better off giving a once-per-year "stimulus check" to everyone who reports a minimum-wage salary on their taxes. Finding the tax dollars to do that would be rough, but at least they wouldn't be coming out of the pockets of businesses already hobbling.

Add to that all the usual arguments against minimum wage and the debate just gets silly. Why not make it $25/hour? Then everybody would be happy, right?

[northstar22]

Originally Posted by mr penguin

This morning's paper says the Michigan Democrats want to raise Michigan's minimum wage to a nationwide high of $10 per hour by 2010. They further want to require employers to provide health insurance for all employees. The second proposal is to force utilities to reduce rates by 20%. Who thinks this is a good idea?

This will cause even more unemployment, putting even more people out of work, and causing companies to leave the state of Michigan. A $6 an hour job is better than no job at all.

[Driller1]

We went to 1099's. That is all that will happen.

[Bydand]

Originally Posted by Driller1

We went to 1099's. That is all that will happen.

Bingo. Suddenly everyone is self-employed and minimum wage doesn't apply. Still keeps it supply and demand for wages and everyone has to provide their own health insurance themselves if they want it.

[sike0000]

I can't see it helping MI. Forcing already strapped companies to fork over more money and benefits to employees they can't afford to keep employed to begin with. Don't get me wrong I would love to see everyone make more money and have benefits but forcing it on employers is not the answer.

And reducing utilities would probably be a disaster as well. With everyone leaving, and forclosures all over, cities are having enough trouble providing services. Now they force them to lower rates when they are already laying off and having trouble providing services. Bad idea

Not that I don't think I am getting ripped off already My water and gas rates are ridiculous.

[tuebor]

I don't know if $10/hr is reasonable at this time, but the usual arguments against minimum wage increases in general are unsound. Every time a minimum wage increase is proposed, conservatives and sophomore econ majors trot out their sky-is-falling arguments, and they've always turned out to be wrong. The argument that minimum wage increases cause unemployment might work in the abstract Neverneverland of econ textbooks, but they don't describe the way things work in real life. In real life life, politics and economics are inseparable, and the policies of the past 30 years have kept the earnings of working people artificially low. So raising the minimum wage doesn't cause unemployment, it just alters the distribution of wealth a bit and induces a few people who have dropped out of the labor market to get back in.

To put it another way, the econ profs' arguments against the minimum wage are valid, so if the conclusion turns out to be false, then their premises (assumptions) must be wrong. One of those assumptions might be that the workers are getting paid according to the dictates of the free market before government policy "interferes" by mandating a wage increase. But in real life, no market can operate in a political vacuum, and government policies will never be completely neutral with regard to the market participants. If a minimum wage increase turns out NOT to cause unemployment (and they never have), that just shows that policies before the wage increase were biased against workers, and the mandated wage increases partially corrected that bias. Another factor may be the multiplier effects of spreading wealth around and enticing unproductive people to get jobs, so that improved economic growth may increase demand for labor more than mandatory pay hikes decrease it.

As for making employers provide health insurance, the employer-based insurance system is a failure, and I don't see why MI Dems would want to hitch their wagon to it. On the utilities thing, I'd like to know where they got that 20% figure.

[michigan83]

In real life life, politics and economics are inseparable, and the policies of the past 30 years have kept the earnings of working people artificially low.

This statement makes me very skeptical of everything else you said. Shady.

[Tiger Beer]

I think that IF conservatives/republicans REALLY want to HELP businesses...they should advocate for HEALTHCARE....the fact that every U.S. employer is BY LAW REQUIRED to provide for health insurance and other benefits is what is REALLY hurting businesses.

Not to mention that the insurance industry and pharmeuceticals are WAY OVERCHARGING the general populace for healthcare...which means taking significant amounts of money AWAY from businesses in general who have to cover that burden.

I'm sure there are other stats out there (I haven't looked) that would probably clearly say that BECAUSE of the healthcare costs directly on the burden of business-owners in America, it is probably a large factor why they are massively going abroad for employees....as well as why TEMP AGENCIES who can do the temp-to-perm thing WITHOUT paying benefits/insurance is where employers are going with all of this.