Yesterday my state voted to approve an increase in minimum wage. It goes as follows:

Today's minimum wage: $7.85/hr

Min wage as of Jan 1st, 2019: $8.85/hr

Followed by step increases until 2023: $12/hr

53% increase in the cost of basic labor spread over 5 years. This will directly impact my "Class C" market wage earners. It will be interesting to see the fall out. My guess is my rents are going.....UP! ;-)

This is going to directly impact the labor

NE, the contractors can "feel they need" a lot of things, a new caddy, steak dinners every night, vacations to disney world. That doesn't mean the supply-demand of their field supports that.

In my area, day workers reject $15/hr. Now they want $160 a day (8 hrs or less) plus a 30 min lunch of their choice (patron pays). Soon they may ask for am expense account.

They also have a "street union" and enforcers - guys who make sure workers conform, or get beat up for agreeing for less.

Result: I hire less and less of them and do more and more myself. I resent their new attitude, they think that the U.S economy will come to a stop without them. Meantime, they are making less money - I see them still waiting for a job in the afternoons.

Fred sees it. Just one more reason why I'm starting to paint another apartment today. I won't pay someone $1,200 to paint a 2 bedroom apartment, not including material. It'll take 1.5-2 days.

Interesting discussions and angles so far, thanks.

The height of irony to me was the people who supported this issue claimed, "Employers support this wage increase!"

My answer, "So why do we need a law? Why didn't they just pay their workers more?" (crickets)

I think the REAL answer is SOME employers support this wage increase because they know they can absorb it better than their competitors who will be forced out of business once the gun of Govt enforcement is resting against everyone's eyebrows. There will certainly be winners and losers with this increase....we should start to see the fallout in about 3-5 years.

Lots of local retailers saw this coming, though. Kiosk ordering and checkout stands are proliferating in my town. I see them in Wal-Mart, Lowes, Home Depot, McDonald's, etc. Big boys are outsourcing/automating. Mom and Pop may not be able to afford this solution and may have to close up shop. We'll see...

Those larger employers don't so much support the increase, they have already increase their wages due to supply/demand. So perhaps that person you quote wasn't so precise and should have said "Many large employers already pay that much and aren't opposing it."

I get about 30 calls in response to my ads before I find my ‘one.’ At that level, its as many responses as I want to handle. If I were to start getting sixty responses, I would definitely jack up prices, just to not have to deal with that demand. So, for those who think higher wages for all means all have a chance to rent a better house, well, I still am not going to deal with people who are NOT working to better themselves above the crowd. If the only way an applicant is getting ‘ahead’ in life is when it’s government mandated, I am moving the bar to access my well-kept properties.

This is part of what happened when the crats tanked the economy in 2006 by giving 200K mortgages to first time home buyers with poor credit. Pelosi and Reid realized that the home buyers were losing the homes and raised the minimum wage three times.

First thing that happens is that all underperforming folks who had been noticed as that by their employeers, get fired. Next the least necessary grade of worker gets fired. In a business that relies on large numbers of lower skilled workers, the sales staff and managers get fired.

In a business with higher skilled and trained employees who are the core of the business, the support staff gets fired and the highly skilled workers take over more of their own support activities which does degrade profitability.

No employer tolerates the goverment giving raises to underperforming employees. This was the nail in the coffin of the Home Buyers program initiated against President Bush's wishes by Pelosi and Reid. The same folks they were trying to buy votes from, got fired. e

I have no work for minimum wage workers. I find the job cost gets cheaper as the skill level increases - to a point. A highly skilled, knowledgeable painter is my preference. I can't imagine hiring inexperienced entry level workmen and then hiring a job superintendent for every project. Mistakes and materials and time delays are too costly.

David, interesting perspective regarding employer support of high wages. So now my question changes:

(Shrug) wages go up, expenses go up, rent goes up.

The last time I rented to anyone earning minimum wage was......never.

The risk is that low wage people will get laid off, shrinking the tenant pool, which is never a good thing. Even though they aren't my tenants, they are someone's tenants.

The fact that some employers already pay a higher starting wage (walmart, amazon warehouses) and neither oppose or support the increase, is just that , a fact. That person you quoted did not make a precise statement and I attempted to clarify based on what I've read about the campaigns in AR and MO.

There was a staff open forum at my university today. The question of the minimum wage increase came up. The CFO answered that no staff members make minimum wage, they all make more. There are some student employees that make minimum, but many of the students make more than minimum as well, because they have skills that allow them to be paid more than minimum. There are a handful of students, usually on work-study (so federally funded jobs), that are paid minimum. They get a financial award and have to work for the funds. Those students who currently earn minimum wage will receive a raise in line with the law.

it will actually hurt those students, because they aren't awarded X many hours of work, they are awarded $XXX of assistance to be paid for working. If they earn it all, the department they are employed by doesn't have to retain them - the student can end up without a job. Not always, but it has been known to happen.

should govt put price controls on all commodities? Labor is a commodity just like wood or sheetrock. All markets for goods or services need to be free

There is never an instance when govt controls a market where the market ends up better

Sid: To also try to help answer your question... I think some people might argue that a significant number of employers do support the increase, but there are some that still don't, of course. Therefore, the ones that do support it can't just raise their pay -- because then they can't compete with those that don't.

So, it might make sense for employers to support a law that makes everyone raise their pay at the same time -- this allows them to pay their employees more and still remain competitive -- because they don't have some other employers keeping their pay low and therefore being able to undercut them.

That would explain why "employers support higher minimum wage", but a law is still needed to cause them all to change. The statement of "employers support higher minimum wage" doesn't really mean that 100% of ALL employers do.

Hope that helps explain that view.

- John...