By Investor’s Business Daily
Fiscal Policy: A city teetering on the brink of insolvency passes a minimum wage that would reach $13 by 2019, higher than the minimum elsewhere in a state that just elected a Republican governor. What could go wrong?
Ignoring the first rule of holes (when you’re in one, stop digging), the Chicago City Council, in a Tuesday emergency session called by Mayor and former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, voted 44-5 to raise the city’s minimum wage from the current statewide level of $8.25 an hour to $10 on July 1, with future increases bringing it to $13 by 2019. After that, it will be pegged to inflation.
What’s the emergency? Emanuel wanted to jump the gun on any minimum-wage bill that might come out of the state legislature in Springfield, particularly after the election of Republican Bruce Rauner as governor. Such legislation is said to bar cities from raising their minimums above the state’s. Rauner has said that any minimum-wage increases should be part of a package that promotes growth without reducing competitiveness.
“Raising the minimum wage doesn’t help somebody (who is) unemployed, and it doesn’t help somebody who’s employed and who could get unemployed because of the lack of competitiveness that raising the minimum wage could engender,” Rauner said.
The Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, Illinois Hotel and Lodging Association and Illinois Restaurant Association all lobbied against the Chicago-only increase, arguing that it would give suburban business a 57% labor-cost advantage.
“Competitiveness” isn’t found in the leftist lexicon, but the concept of a living wage is. This notion says that employees should be paid based not on the value of their work but on the demands of their lifestyles. Street protests and the lobbying of pandering policymakers have replaced a good education and an improved skill set.
One alderman who opposed the Chicago-only increase and whose ward borders on nine Chicago suburbs, Mary O’Connor, rightly predicted “unintended consequences,” ranging from more “vacant storefronts” to fewer jobs and shorter hours for those having or seeking a job.
Companies are neither charities nor pipelines for income redistribution. Increased labor costs either force them to move to friendlier business climes, hire fewer workers, cut worker pay, pass costs on to customers, replace employees with technology, or all of the above.
Moody’s Investors Service has downgraded Chicago’s credit rating by three notches, partly the result of $19 billion in unfunded pension debt. In the first decade of this century, the city lost 7.1% of its jobs. Its famous Loop, the second-largest business district in the nation, has reportedly lost 18.6% of its private-sector positions.
Raising the minimum wage will not reverse these setbacks. Time to stop digging, Mr. Mayor.
Read more at Investor’s Business Daily
So bloody stupid, with unintended consequences anyone could project and that will kick in almost immediately.
I know two small business owners who will almost surely decide to fold, and then the alderman can go hunting for another business to fill yet another empty storefront.
More jobs will be lost, more businesses will fold or will lay off, and fewer will choose to locate in the city, or in IL.
This will lead to more unemployment which equals more blacks killing each other and any white that comes along.Hey Chicago what do think about your shitie now ? Gets better every day.
Hey Chicago , fair question . Are you overweight?are you a lesbian?Your wondering what’s that got to do with anything?Just be polite and answer the questions.
These progressives are tacitly admitting that higher minimum wages will reduce employment. Why else would they phase in the increases over time? If $13 per hour is the perfect wage in 2019, why not now?
And why stop at $13? They babble endlessly about “living wages” (the term is conveniently never defined or quantified), yet somehow think a head of household can support a family in Chicago on $26K per year. I don’t think so.
Let’s stop fooling around and really make people prosperous. Make it $100 per hour!
NO, I am not overweight and I am not a lesbian.
I am still pretty and look young for my age.
And what the fuck do my physical attributes have to do with you’re being an irrational moron?
And while I’m at it, I have OTHER questions for you:
Like, when did you last get laid? 5 years ago? 10? And how much did you have to pay? How many pounds overweight are YOU? And do you bathe regularly?
You need to get out of Chicago (and Illinois), Chicago999444. You really do. Can you sell your condo at this time? You can get a condo in Florida in certain areas for 50K to 70K (or less for a fixer-upper). Not crappy neighborhoods either. Annual property taxes down here are outrageously low, especially for seniors that have a primary residence exemption.
Things will continue to deteriorate there for sure. Maybe it’s time to leave.
Chicago , just trying to figure out why you make excuses for blacks all the time .I got a cousin who is fat ,a sometimes lesbian and looks like a crocodile.The only people who will have sex with her are other ugly lesbians and blacks.
No I don’t take baths , no I’m not overweight and yes I am handsome.Get all the pussy I could ever want but I believe in the wrath of GOD so I’m saving myself.
Are you sexless?
What exactly is the topic of discussion in this thread? I’m lost, non-bathing lesbians and higher minimum wage? For $300.00 per hour I will become a sexless lesbian that does not take a bath.
STEVE- What would happen if the minimum wage were $100 per hour? Answer, I would be asking you if you want cheese on your burger.
bb, since WHEN do I make excuses for blacks “all the time”? How do you figure?
Did I make excuses for thug Brown, or for race hustlers like Sharpton and the white liberal “multiculturalists”?
I will continue to “make excuses” for ANYONE of any race or color, or of either sex or any gender, who is tortured or killed by thug cops for A) asserting his or her civil rights and B)is only engaging in an activity that is harmless, bothers no one, and is illegal only because of some invasive Nanny State law that is a blatant violation of our rights. I will defend ANYONE’S right to be left the hell alone when he or she is harming no one. I will defend anyone’s right to be treating humanely when charged with minor violations of intrusive nanny state laws.
An old boyfriend of mine, a rich white man, got a nasty lesson a few decades back in the growing violence and criminality of our police a couple of decades back, when he dissed a Skokie cop at a traffic stop. Skokie cops have a well-earned reputation decades old for “excessive force”, which my friend discovered. WHAT, I shrieked, you mouthed off to a SKOKIE COP?? You’re lucky you lived to talk about it.
Again, this is not a “race thing”. This is our thug governments against their citizens.
Chicago
Didn’t you read the signs. Don’t feed the bb.
He’s our village idiot and should be ignored.
His purpose in life is to provoke intelligent people like yourself into debating with a low IQ Fed Ex delivery moron who lives with his mom and his cat.
Like Seattle, Chicago is now a liberal lab experiment. Go for it, Chi-Town. We’re all getting out the popcorn to enjoy the show.
Three problems with your comment, SSS.
1. Chicago successfully exports its problems to the rest of long-suffering Illinoisans.
2. I live in Illinois.
3. Two of my sons live in Illinois, and the third also works in Illinois, so I’m not going far.
The world would be a better place if small asteroids landed on Chicago, Washington DC, LA, and a few other cesspits of people controllers. I’m not holding my breath.
If you ever want to see the gates of hell, travel to Chicago and visit the triangle formed with apexes of Chicago City Hall, the Dirksen Federal Building and the (Big Jim) Thompson State of Illinois building. Add two porta-johns and you’ll have the requisite pentagram.
Collectivists believe they can control physical reality via incantations (words on paper, as in legislation.)
I often wonder if people like Rahm E. are so deluded that they believe their own PR or so evil that they absolutely understand what they are doing yet do it anyway.
Scares the crap out of me, either way. These are the people my moron fellow citizens promote to positions of coercive power.
And people wonder where the Maos, Stalins, Pol Pots and Hitlers come from…..
I swear these politicians are cruel heartless monsters. I say the living wage should be a million dollars an hour.
Its simple economics – oh sorry – the laws of economics do not apply to labor. /sarc
Admin, I know that bb is the village idiot, but sometimes, you just can’t help yourself.
However, you’re right. I dropped a couple of “frenemies” because they were very much like him in their female way. You can’t help these people.
Rahm Emanuel’s evil is exceeded only by that of his brother, Dr Ezekiel Emanuel. He HAS to know full well what he is doing.
Call me foolish, but at some point, but at some point, the sensible denizens of this city will get off their asses and not only vote for a change, but maybe even be motivated enough to get candidates on the ballot who could work to turn the tide.
But the city might have to bankrupt to motivate them. People have this way of believing that just because things have gone a certain way for a long time, like for the past 80 years, they will continue forever. I mean, the streets get cleaned, the water is good, the crime in MOST neighborhoods is low, and never have so many high end houses and condos sold for such staggering prices to so many giga-rich people in the tony inner-city precincts of Streeterville and the Near North Side. People also easily detach themselves from things that aren’t happening on their doorsteps, like the mayhem that takes place 10-15 miles south of downtown. Michigan Ave is back under control and a billionaire software developer just paid $17 M cash for the penthouse on top of the Trump Bldg, so how bad off could we be, the sheeple figure. And the people who benefit from inflation are licking their chops at the thought of price and rent hikes, while planning the layoffs and the moves to low-wage locales.
Please forgive the repetition in the second paragraph- this thing is acting strange tonight.
Chicago999444:
This is my 8-unit condo building located on the central east of Florida, built in 1986. I paid 34K for a downstairs 2 bed/2bath 738 sq ft-er. I had to spend about 11K renovating it. HOA fee is $196.08 per month. Average electric bill is $52 per month. I just paid my annual property taxes (total) for next year: $299.03. Homeowners insurance per year is about $400.
My apartment has appreciated about 15K since I bought it in early 2012, but you can get an idea of what you might find perhaps in my county or another. Sorry, but this is the only decent pic that I have. Cheers.
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“This notion says that employees should be paid based not on the value of their work but on the demands of their lifestyles.”
I would like to ask anyone that believes in that statement what they would do if let’s say their child were to buy an ice-cream from some street vender and if that street vender on that particular day had not sold any other ice-creams all day. Now that ice-cream vender deserves to earn a living wage does he not? And in this particular circumstance you are his only source of income, therefore you need to provide him with his $15/hr x 8hr = $120. After all we no longer consider the value of the product or service provided, we now pay based on the demands of the workers lifestyle- Right?
Indialantic, I guess that is not a bad place, but if you saw my 20s vintage place in Chicago, you’d know why I can’t stand the thought of parting with it. Sorry, but I’m addicted to beautiful architecture and fine old buildings, things that Chicago has more of the almost any other American city. I also have nice neighbors, a short bus ride to the el, a lot of retail within an easy walk, the Lyric Opera, the CSO, the art museums, hundreds of great restaurants and bars, a lively jazz scene, beautiful parks, dozens of art galleries, dozens of friends, lots of datable, attractive men, trains that run 24/7 and are safe in the middle of the night, and I’m less than a mile from great beaches in the summer.
Things seem hopeless now, but I am sensing a major shift nigh in the way people here think. For one thing, the sensible denizens are beginning to realize that by not voting, they’re letting 10% of the population, if even that, dictate policy. Think about that: of all eligible voters, perhaps 40% turn out at the polls, especially in Chicago, where municipal elections are held in FEBRUARY in odd-numbered years. Don’t think for a minute that TPTB decided to hold elections in the coldest month of the year thoughtlessly. Incumbents benefit from low turnout, especially when you consider that the petition period, during which aspiring candidates gather signatures of registered voters in their jurisdictions and have around 2 months to gather the requisite number of verifiable signatures, begins just as the weather becomes miserable. Do you think that was accidental? Gathering signatures that stand up to verification is not easy in the best weather- just watch how fast and far away people on the street get when someone approaches them with a petition-you’d think you were an ebola carrier as people step into moving traffic to get away from you when they see that clipboard in your hand. Then, the incumbent, who has about 10X as many people out there collecting signatures as a new candidate, sets to work disqualifying your signatures. By the time the ballots are ready, there are many incumbents who have NO ONE running against them because they were successful in getting enough of their opponents’ signatures disqualified to keep them off the ballot. This means that the election was decided not by 10% , or even 1% of the electorate, but by a relative handful of people.
People are slowly waking up, as they are across the country. Even the working poor are beginning to realize that statist band-aid solutions are not helping, but hurting them, as many realize they are no better off at the current minimum than they were at $5 an hour a couple of decades back, or $2 an hour in the 70s. It takes local prices maybe 2 months to adjust upwards in response to higher expenses, and it takes an employer about 2 days to decide to cut hours. As one woman said, no matter what the minimum wage is, it’s always the amount of money you cannot live on.
Admin , I do enjoy to provoke people at Times . You only defense is your claim to be intelligent . I find most of you to be amusing.Carry on.
Information is what we share at this forum on a daily basis, Chicago999444. For you and others who may live in the Windy City, I only offer an alternative. I hope things improve for you and all other TBPers who might live there. Cheers.
The following quote from the article above says it all:
“Companies are neither charities nor pipelines for income redistribution. Increased labor costs either force them to move to friendlier business climes, hire fewer workers, cut worker pay, pass costs on to customers, replace employees with technology, or all of the above.”
“dc.sunsets says:
Three problems with your comment, SSS.
1. Chicago successfully exports its problems to the rest of long-suffering Illinoisans.
2. I live in Illinois.
3. Two of my sons live in Illinois, and the third also works in Illinois”
Now, hold on a second, Skippy. You read too much into my comments about Chicago now being another liberal lab experiment with its recent artificially high minimum wage law. I’m pretty much aware that if Chicago sneezes, the rest of Illinois catches a cold.
Starting with NYC and LA, that happens elsewhere too. Would I like to see those two big shitties follow Seattle and Chicago’s lead on minimum wage? You bet. The more the merrier. Know why? When all this nonsense starts to unravel and is provably damaging to the local economy, the liberals will have no excuses. Sure, they’ll make something up and point the finger elsewhere, but maybe, just maybe, their big-city voting bastions will start to crumble.
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There is no government outside of corporate control and until the majority of sugar swilling shitheads wakes up to this reality ,expect more of the same..
Government’s Small Business Administration Exposed As Corporate Welfare For Big Business
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-12-03/governments-small-business-administration-exposed-corporate-welfare-big-business
The Small Business Administration is under fire for lending billions of taxpayer dollars a year to exclusive country clubs, golf resorts, yacht clubs, pet resorts, upscale plastic surgeons, wineries and other businesses catering to the lifestyles of the very wealthy.
A new report by the federal spending watchdog OpentheBooks.com has uncovered these and other questionable loan activities by the SBA and its roughly $106 billion loan portfolio.
It’s the latest in a long history of hard-to-justify lending activities by a federal agency that proclaims its purpose is to “help Americans start, build and grow businesses.”
The SBA has come under attack for gross misallocation of funds and even potential fraud. A 2008 inspector general report found 1-in-4 SBA loans involved improper payments.
In 2011 the Cato Institute investigated the program and concluded: “Although lawmakers portray the SBA’s programs as a boost for small businesses, the programs are actually a form of corporate welfare for some of America’s largest banks. The banks reap profits from the program, but taxpayers are liable for the losses.”
The profits flow to some of the biggest banks that snatch up the loan guarantees — which are like licenses to make money on risky loans.
In 2009, the top 10 lending institutions swallowed up roughly one-quarter of all the SBA loan guarantees. Wells Fargo & Co., JPMorgan Chase, U.S. Bancorp and PNC Financial Services Group were the big beneficiaries, with taxpayers guaranteeing repayment of the loans and the banks collecting the profits.
The businesses that benefit from the low-cost lending often aren’t small at all.
According to a 2010 audit by the Government Accountability Office, 61 of the top 100 small business contractors were in reality large businesses. This same study found that the government awarded more than half of the $8 billion of the government’s $14 billion in “small” business contracts to large businesses.
Open the Books found that from 2007-13, $92 million went to beauty spas in upscale towns such as Lake Tahoe and Napa Valley.
More than $160 million was lent to at least 40 exclusive “members only” country clubs. An additional $1.5 million was lent to the Pequonnock Yacht Club in Connecticut. Several Rolex jewelers cashed in on $20 million in loans. A $3.5 million loan went to Lamborghini dealerships in Chicago and Orange County, Calif.
Another scandal at SBA is how private equity firms game the system to cash in on loan guarantees. In total, $9 billion of SBA funds flowed through “venture capital, capital partner firms, mezzanine finance firms and private investment funds,” the report discovered.
“It’s an amazing scam,” says Andrzejewski. “These billion dollar equity firms are making investments backed by taxpayers. It’s a federally insured license to make money.”
But not for taxpayers. “Charge offs” on loans and guarantees have totaled $11 billion since 2010 and $27 billion since 2005.
The Small Business Administration is yet another taxpayer funded scam sink.
Look closely at EVERY program promulgated by our government to “help the little man” and you will see that every single one was really a just a transfer of our money to the coffers of the rich and powerful, from the Homestead Act that enabled large growers to assemble holdings of up to 300,000 acres for free, clear up to today’s entitlement programs such as Section 8, a welfare program for slumlords that has inflated rents for substandard housing and middle income housing alike and priced the working class out of housing in most cities, to even SNAP, which benefits the financial institutions processing the payments.
speaking of stupid…House Repugs were tricked into supporting amnesty.? LMAO!!! ..sure they were.the GOP isn’t called the Party of Stupid for nothing.
Exclusive: House GOP Leaders Trick 216 House Republicans into Accidentally Supporting Obama’s Executive Amnesty
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/12/07/Exclusive-House-GOP-Leaders-Trick-216-House-Republicans-Into-Accidentally-Supporting-Obama-s-Executive-Amnesty
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In order to do your part in stimulating the economy,dust off that plastic and go shopping, and on the way home don’t forget to stop and break some windows.
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Gruber is a fool..moral of this story…never allow yourself be recorded telling the truth in public.
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When minimum wage is politically increased – as opposed to increases through market forces – the results are always bad, and always covered up by something worse.
Michigan raised its minimum wage in the middle of our “one state” recession. The IMMEDIATE effect was an increase in unemployment and decrease in jobs – along with another strata of little business giving up.
BUT it was conveniently covered up by the rest of the country “entering” the greater depression.
All I know is that if I owned a business that used minimum wage employees, I would be seriously looking at changing it.
Stop ALL healthcare, cut ALL part-timers, install only full-time employees that are worth the extra money – so NO teens or others that NEED experience and skill building.
Obamacare absolutely SLAUGHTERED businesses with minimum wage workers. Nobody works enough to even qualify for unemployment – notice how nobody tries to reconcile that with statistics – everybody experienced cuts in hour.
My sister’s company, which operates in multiple states, decided in July to cut all their workers from full-time (no benes) to part-time. BUT they upped their wages to the “new” minimum ($10.10).
So they now work half days for more money, but thanks to overhead (gas, car, insurance, daycare) most are now making substantially less.
Here’s the rub, over the next 3 years the minimum in Michigan is going up (already voted in, Republican governor that claimed to be different, SHOCK he ain’t much better than the demoncrap we got rid of) and my sis will not see ONE dime.
You see before the increase/decrease, she had received FIVE raises in her first nine months. She now makes the exact same as everyone else.
To say she is discouraged is an understatement. WHY do “better” when there is no benefit to your extra effort?
Oh that’s right, the last hundred years of protected labor and unions has proven that the vast majority will not.
The “upside” to owning your own business continues to shrink.
After 20 years of offshoring, the VAST majority in this country continue to pretend it hasn’t happened and/or that other things have appeared to put our people to work.
The VAST majority drive by the blackened buildings and empty parking lots and never give it one thought:
WHERE did all the people/jobs go?
Instead of accepting reality – that government safety and intervention comes at the cost of our futures – they demand MORE.
And MORE they are surely going to get.
Bye-bye Chicago (the city, not commenter), with decisions like this it won’t be long now before it will be nearly impossible to live there.
Detroit pulled this shit back in the ’70s, increased the cost of doing business to the point the productive walked (ran) away.
It didn’t seem to work out for us, but hell, maybe with the magician Rahm at the helm Chicago will defy the laws of physics and finance and this will “help.”
bwwwwahhaaaaaahaaaaahaaaa
The Republicans support amnesty because they want to stuff this country with desperate, poor people from south of the border who will work for any wage under any conditions. The demand for cheap labor by farming corporations that own hundreds of thousands of acres is the core reason for the lack of enforcement of our immigration laws. You can consider that our welfare programs, whose beneficiaries are disproportionately immigrants from poor countries, are subsidies for the employers of cheap undocumented labor, relieving them of the necessity of paying wages that would even cover minimal living expenses in a tent city, to attract cheap help.
The rest of us pay not only in our taxes, but in ruined neighborhoods wrecked by families doubling up in rental houses and greatly lowering the overall level of maintenance and cleanliness, while we’re saddled with yet another contentious “victim” minority demanding “rights” and special privileges.
Our leaders’ motives have always been transparent- the dilution and cheapening of our labor force at the expense of our native working population. The losers are poor whites and aspiring blacks. Clinton laid bare the motives of our oligarchs and their plan to turn the U.S. into a 3rd world plantation of low-paid flunkies when he signed NAFTA and then the repeal of Glass-Steagall and its replacement, the Graham-Leach-Bailey Financial Modernization Act.