Monday, April 8, 2019

Massachusetts And New York Beginning To See The Ugly Side Of Minimum Wage Hikes

By Panos Mourdoukoutas

Massachusetts, New York, and several other states are beginning to see the ugly side of minimum wage hikes: coffee shop and restaurant store closures, reduced hours of work, and job cuts.


Mandated minimum wage hikes have a pretty side and an ugly side, according to economists. The pretty side is the additional money they put in the pockets of those who work for a minimum wage.

The ugly side is the payroll tsunami they unleash for smaller businesses, already under stress from soaring healthcare costs and rents.


For some of these businesses, the minimum wage hikes tip the balance between staying in business and going out of business.

That’s what happened to once iconic Boston restaurant Durgin-Park in Faneuil Hall. It closed the doors after two centuries in operation, as it couldn’t cope with wage and healthcare premium hikes.

That’s a great loss for Boston’s living history, a loss for the store owners, and a loss for those who worked there.

Apparently, in this case, minimum wage hikes ended up hurting those they were supposed to help.

For other small businesses, minimum wage hikes have yet to tip the balance between staying in business or going out of business. But they force them to cut employee hours or lay-off employees to cope with the higher payroll. "First, we have to cut overtime," says Chris, a franchise owner in Long Island. "Next, we have to lay people off, if we want to stay in business."

Nowhere is this more evident than NYC, which has seen wage hikes year after year, now paying what the ‘Fight for $15’ movement has fought for around the country.

Read the rest here.



1 comment:

  1. Oh come now. The virtue signalling opportunities for the politicians and bureaucrats is far more important than jobs and small businesses staying afloat.

    ReplyDelete