Watch: After Winning Dems Over to $15 Min Wage, Tlaib's Now Demanding $20
Sometimes, a video comes along that is so utterly idiotic, it makes you want to bang your head against the nearest wall.
This is one of those videos, and the truly amazing part is that it features a sitting U.S. congresswoman. During a speech at a “One Fair Wage” event, Democrat Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan showed off a jaw-dropping ignorance of economics by declaring that a $15 per hour minimum wage was too low.
“Big fights like this one, $15. When we started it, it should have been $15,” Tlaib said, referring to the recent liberal push to hike minimum wages to $15 at both the state and federal levels.
But even though businesses are already dealing with the negative consequences of that raise, the far-left congresswoman announced that the $15 goal was already old news. Tlaib wants to keep inflating that number with no limit in sight.
“Now I think it should be $20 … It should be $20 an hour. $18-20 an hour,” she said.
WATCH: @RashidaTlaib calls for a $20 Minimum Wage. pic.twitter.com/tKsjOXDhIj
— America Rising (@AmericaRising) July 22, 2019
She wasn’t done. Demonstrating that winning an election doesn’t mean you have the slightest grasp of how the economy works, Tlaib went on a rant about how the prices of consumer goods were climbing as minimum wage keeps increasing. You just can’t make this up.
“They say all this is going to raise the costs,” Tlaib said. “But I can tell you, milk has gone up! Eggs has gone up! Everything has gone up, the cost of food has gone up, the cost of a lot of things that we need has gone up already.”
It couldn’t possibly be that constantly raising the minimum wage is driving prices up. In Tlaib’s world, grocery stores can simply raise wages by waving a magic wand, with absolutely no impact on the costs of goods.
Anybody who doubts that price hikes are already happening should talk to restaurant managers in New York City. Due to city-level spikes in the minimum wage, restaurants have been forced to cut employee hours and raise prices in a city that was already prohibitively expensive.
“New York City restaurant owners say the latest minimum wage hike is forcing them to cut workers’ hours just to stay afloat,” CBS News reported back in January.
“We lost control of our largest controllable expense,” one restaurateur who employs hundreds of people said. “So in order to live with that and stay in business, we’re cutting hours.”
Even outspoken Democratic socialist Bernie Sanders, who has made higher minimum wages a key part of his presidential platform, was recently embarrassed after staff members revealed they weren’t being paid the $15 per hour that Sanders claims to support.
Sanders’ campaign was forced to cut back on staff hours to make the wage increase happen, confirming what everyone who passed Economics 101 has been saying for years.
But Tlaib and others like her, including New York City’s own Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, don’t seem to care. They continue to push for a higher minimum wage with no end in sight, apparently oblivious to the disastrous consequences of their own policies.
Here’s a question: Why stop at $20 per hour? If that number is so great for workers and can be raised with no side effects, why not $30? Why not $100?
Anybody with two functioning brain cells knows the answer. At some point, the “benefits” of sky-high minimum wages mandated by the government are outweighed by the negative impacts — inflation, fewer hours, and fewer jobs available for entry-level or low skilled workers, many of which are minorities.
The fact that even Tlaib acknowledges inflation yet fails to make the connection to the minimum wage increase is stunning.
Everybody wants to see people do well, instead of struggling to make ends meet. But if solutions don’t make economic sense, they’re no better than wishful thinking.
And no Democrat seems willing to acknowledge that minimum wages are just that: minimums. They are meant to be a starting point for entry-level workers who can then build better-earning careers.
Here’s an idea: let’s let the free market do what it does best, and keep meddlesome bureaucrats from steering the economy straight off a cliff.
Jobs are plentiful and consumer confidence is high, but those trends will only continue if we apply common sense and stop handing our future to busy-bodies who are interested only in easy votes.
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