Minimum Wage Proposals On 2016 Ballot Will Lead To Over 250K In Job Losses

This is a syndicated repost courtesy of Confounded Interest. To view original, click here. Reposted with permission.
Fairfax County Virginia has a 2016 ballot initiative to raise a prepared meals tax of 4%, used to fund public schools (70%) and County services, capital improvements and property tax relief (30%). Let’s hope it works better than the minimum wages initiatives on the ballots in several states.
Minimum wages sound great … if you don’t think about it too hard. But raising the minimum wage has to be paid for by somebody and it is usually the same group of people that the minimum wage is allegedly trying to benefit.
A simple example might help. You have a fast food restaurant with 3 workers. With a higher minimum wage, you are likely to see 2 happier workers (unless they have to work longer hours) and 1 worker that loses their job. Alternatively, the fast food restaurant could raise prices and try to pass the minimum wage increase on to consumers (passing the ‘tax’ onto consumers). Of course, the minimum wage cheerleaders usually hope the the owner of the fast food restaurant will take a decrease in profits to fund the higher minimum wages.

This post was published at Wall Street Examiner by Caleb Crawdad ‘ October 29, 2016.