40 hours x $8 (now) = $320 / week minimum wage
Under ObamaCare with ObamaWage: 30 hours x $10.10 = $303 / week minimum wage
And employers will cost shift their health care liabilities.
The new minimum wage won't kick in before the election, so 30 hours x $8 = $240 / week.
Somewhere, on some PowerPoint slide, President Obama has been shown this data point. I assume, even he, with no business experience, can do the math.
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Selected State Data
Arizona, Montana, : $7.90
Connecticut: $8.70
Oregon is an outlier: $9.10
Washington is an outlier: $9.32
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Catching Up On The Day's News
Chicago workers concerned about their pensions. CNNMoney is reporting:
After years of avoiding the issue, the city of Chicago is facing a massive spike in its annual bill for the pensions it promised current and retired workers. Next year, the city's required contribution will more than double to $1.07 billion.
City Hall says the nearly $600 million increase translates to the city's annual cost for 4,300 police officers or more than 3,750 firefighters or the resurfacing of nearly 16,000 city blocks. At the same time, Chicago Public Schools, which have a separate budgeting process, have their own pension fight.
The district will pay $613 million towards its teachers' pensions this year-- a big increase from prior years and more than 10% of the agency's total budget.
From a reader (for various reasons I will post this instead of from the reader directly; it is unedited):
ReplyDeleteWhat the 30hr work week and $10 minimum wage really means, is that people like me now can work 2 full time jobs without killing ourselves. 60hrs is the amount of time professionals work a week. Now the poor can enjoy that instead of the 80hrs for crap wages.
1. That is the White House / Jay Carney argument.
Delete2. The math still doesn't work.
3. 80 hrs x $8 = $640 currently; future 60 hrs x 10.10 = $606. But if that's where it stopped, that would be well worth it; 20 hours more time with the family for about the same pay. The problem is that the employer will also cost-shift health care premiums.
4. The biggest problem is the concern addressed by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office: raising the minimum wage will result in a loss of 500,000 jobs. One can quibble about the number. The number of lost jobs is trivial for me, but not to minimum-wage earners. As noted elsewhere, raising the minimum wage will hasten the day McDonald's and the rest of te industry install self-ordering kiosks and one of four wage-earning jobs will be lost. The point is this: with a higher minimum wage, the CBO cannot guarantee there will be enough minimum wage jobs to go around. The individual who used to work 80 hours may be lucky enough to find/keep one job. 30 hours x $10.10 = $303, a far cry from the $600 he/she is making now.
5. I am not aware of "60 hours is the amount of time professionals work a week." Some work far less. Some work far more. My hunch is that the "average" professional is working more than he/she would like to work and feels he/she is not being paid what he/she is worth. There are a few of us who enjoy working for free.