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Thingish Things

The Living Wage Farce

Written By: William F. B. O'Reilly - May• 09•11

Chris Bragg of City Hall newspaper just broke a report commissioned by the Bloomberg Administration on the so-called “Living Wage Bill” being advanced in the New York City Council by the Working Families Party (WFP) and other leftist groups. The bill would force companies with business before the City to pay workers $10 per hour if they provide health insurance, and $11.50 if they do not — well over New York’s minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.

Mayor Bloomberg and other fiscally educated New Yorkers have argued that this legislation would drive more business out of New York and into other states — New York already is ranked dead last in business friendliness in America — and the report, unsurprisingly, concurs with their hypothesis. It suggests and quantifies, in fact, that the Living Wage Bill would do the most damage to the people the WFP and others are purporting to help, by drying up tens of thousands of entry jobs in the Big Apple.

The study was conducted by Charles River Associates in Boston.

Are there any MBA’s in the City Council today? Anyone with any economic background?


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4 Comments

  1. Your Friend says:

    Just like most of the people who work in Manhattan can’t afford to live here, most of the businesses that are here have to be here and will remain here regardless of the success of this bill. If a couple of bucks an hour for your lowest paid employees drives you out of the city, you don’t belong here with the big boys.

    I remember making $3.35/hour in 1981. It seemed like slave labor. The minimum wage is not something that anyone can actually live on and it’s precisely why so many people don’t pay taxes, because they live in abject poverty. Minimum wage comes out to about $250/week, $13k/year. Do you really think we can expect to have a functioning society with the kind of pay scale at the bottom? To me, the minimum wage should $15/hour. But of course, that makes me a communist.

    http://www.dol.gov/whd/minwage/chart.htm

  2. Me says:

    Don’t listen to Dwight, Billy. You’re exactly right. The ratio of CEO to worker pay in the U.S. is only 344:1. And average CEO pay was just $11.4 million last year. I mean, really, how do those guys scrape by? And where oh where could those extra dollars to pay the lowly workers come from? You can’t squeeze water from a stone. Those guys are tapped out!! (By the way, the ratio of CEO to worker pay was 42:1 in 1960 and is around 25:1 currently in Europe. Damn socialists. Don’t they see the injustice? Those poor execs…)

  3. Those obnoxiously rich businesses have been fleeing New York — with the jobs they provide — for decades.

  4. Your Friend says:

    Actually, New York remains a magnet for business and it will never be otherwise. According to Crain’s, the second largest small business market in the country after LA.

    http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20100830/FREE/100829817&cat=small_business

    http://realestate.yahoo.com/promo/americas-best-cities-for-business-in-2011.html

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