Minimum Wage Destroys Jobs In New York City

New York City is easily the most progressive city in the country in every area except police. It is only rivaled by San Francisco, Portland, and Chicago (who elected a member of a communist party to there city council).

While local politics is just a bunch of communists, the people who claim to be in nationalist politics have to at least pretend to be slightly moderate (with the obvious exception of Bill De Blasio). Yet, one thing that even the most moderate Democrat can seem to agree with is that minimum wage must be a living wage.

New York City’s Communist Mayor — wait, I’m getting word that he’s not a communist he just quotes Che Guevara and calls people comrades — and Presidential Candidate Bill De Blasio lists “The Right to Fair Pay,” on his website. Calling it an example for his “21st Century Workers Bill of Rights,” named after former President Franklin Roosevelt. Wait until he learns FDR not only said he saved capitalism, but also wasn’t even the farthest left in the Democratic Party at the time, that would be Senator Huey Long. A man who almost certainly would have been President had someone not shot him.

De Blaso says the following on his website:

It’s been 10 years since the minimum wage has been increased — the longest period without an increase since the minimum wage was created over 80 years ago. In addition, it’s time to phase out the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers and create one fair wage for all.

It has also been almost sixty years without new Jim Crow laws, the longest we’ve gone since they were first created. (For those calling this extreme, don’t worry, we’ll come back to it)

The far-left Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio Cortez represents New York’s 14th Congressional District. That is the Congressional District that also represents the largest portion of New York City. Here’s what she says on her website:

A Federal Jobs Guarantee would create a baseline standard for employment that includes a $15 minimum wage (pegged to inflation), full healthcare, and child and sick leave for all. This proposal would dramatically upgrade the quality of employment in the United States, by providing training and experience to workers while bringing much-needed public services to our communities in areas such as parks service, childcare and environmental conservation.

Cortez is also a member of Justice Democrats. Here is what there website says about a minimum wage:

[Securing a living wage tied to inflation] is about justice and basic human decency. If you work hard and you work full time you shouldn’t live in poverty. Furthermore, we support strong unions and collective bargaining.

Another Presidential Candidate Kirsten Gillibrand— yes, she counts — is also a Senator from New York. Her website says the following:

It’s unacceptable that so many Americans are forced to work multiple jobs and make sacrifices just to take care of their families while the cost of living and corporate profits soar. Our economy should value and reward workers, not just CEOs and shareholders. We need to stop big corporations from making taxpayers subsidize astronomical paychecks for corporate officers. We need to raise the minimum wage to $15 nationwide and lift millions of families out of poverty.

The Governor of New York is a man named Andrew Cuomo. Here’s a line from his website:

Governor Cuomo is fighting for economic justice by securing New York’s groundbreaking $15 minimum wage, enacting critical protections for New York’s workers, passing the largest affordable housing and anti-homelessness program in state history, expanding the child care tax credit for working families, and passing the first in the nation plan to provide free college for New York students. Governor Cuomo has fought to give all New Yorkers the opportunity to succeed.

And I could go on.

Why did I give all that background? Well, I figured it would only be fair to see how well the Minimum Wage hike is working for New York. Well, at the end of 2018 New York City chose to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. I should note this is only a difference of $2 an hour to what it previously was, which is what some more moderate liberals and conservatives say “wouldn’t be a big deal.”

Here’s how that worked out:

According to The Wall Street Journal, entrepreneurs across the city are having to make tough choices to the detriment of their employees in order to stay solvent. Thomas Grech, the president of the Queens Chamber of Commerce, told the Journal that small businesses have been shuttering over the last six to nine months, which he blamed on the minimum wage legislation.

Well what do you know? Minimum wage has destroyed jobs all across New York City. Something every single economist has warned about unless they’re a Keynesian and whatever school of economics Steve Keen made up.

Restaurant owner Susannah Koteen said it best when she simply said:

What it really forces you to do is make sure that nobody works more than 40 hours. You can only cut back so many people before the service starts to suffer.

She also points out how this caused her to hire less people:

A server can bus their own table, but you can’t ask a busboy to open a bottle of wine and talk about what it can be paired with.

Again, proving the simple theory that artificially forcing people to pay more leads to less people being hired.

The thing I would like to add is this is something they always knew. The very first minimum wage act introduced into Congress was the Davis-Bacon Act on 1927. Why was it introduced? Because a contractor employed a Black worker to build a Veterans’ Bureau in the district of Robert Bacon (R-NY).

The first state to introduce a minimum wage was Massachusetts in 1912. They admitted this act was simply to try and keep women out of the workforce. Remember, the progressive movement came out of the eugenics movement.

To end, here’s a quote from former chair of the UK Labor Party Sidney Webb:

[O]f all ways of dealing with these unfortunate parasites, the most ruinous to the community is to allow them to unrestrainedly compete as wage earners