California Fuels Our Inflation Rate!
by Andy Caldwell
The California legislature has created a $20 per hour minimum wage for fast food workers claiming the rate hike is necessary for these “head of household” jobs. But truly, the only head of household jobs in fast food are management positions. Moreover, with the current worker shortage, nobody should be forced to stay in a minimum wage job for long, except for those with no job experience or those with rare circumstances hindering their path to gainful employment and promotions. The legislature also raised the minimum wage to $25 per hour for anyone and everyone, not just doctors or nurses, working in the field of healthcare!
The legislature thereby leap-frogged over the already substantial $15 per hour minimum wage to benefit organized labor that has been trying with no success to organize fast food and health care workers for the past decade. These raises will be very detrimental to employers and consumers not to mention future job applicants. To understand why, you need to understand the economic phenomenon known as wage compression.
When minimum wages rise, there must also be a significant rise in pay for those who were already earning more than the minimum wage. For instance, once the minimum wage for fast food workers rises to $20 per hour, the assistant manager that was previously making $20 per hour, will now demand $25 per hour to avoid wage compression between the two positions. This is of upmost importance to unions because all union job pay scales are set at a multiple of the minimum wage. So, if the unions can raise the minimum wage, all their members will get higher compensation!
Government should instead focus on hindrances to upward mobility in America. Historical analysis proves that any kid, no matter how poor, who finishes high school, commits no crimes, foregoes the use of drugs and alcohol, and waits a few years before getting married to have children, well, that person has a 75% chance of making it to the middle class in America and only a 2% chance of remaining in poverty through adult life. That is, the societal, economic, and cultural values of Western Civilization; a good education, hard work, decent living, and staying out of trouble, still pays dividends in America no matter who you are.
Of course, government and society in general is not helping, aiding, or abetting American youth along this path. Quite the opposite. As JD Unwin, an anthropologist observed from the annals of history, sexual hedonism destroys civilizations. He observed that when strict prenuptial chastity was forsaken by society, a type of human entropy ensued, that is, a gradual descent into societal decay and chaos.
Accordingly, the worst generational poverty rates in America are among African Americans as the black marriage rate in America is a dismal 30%! Some 52% of black men and 48% of black women have never been married. The number of black children that lived in single-parent households in 2021 was 64%, compared to 42% for Latinos, 24% for whites and 16% for Asians.
Moreover, in typical inner cities such as Baltimore, Maryland, comprised of some 23 city schools, zero students tested proficient in math in 2022! In Chicago, which has the worst black on black violence in America, 75% of the children can’t read at their grade level and 38% are chronically truant meaning it is no surprise that the eventual dropout rate is12x the rate of students in the suburban areas of the city.
$20 an hour wages at a fast-food restaurant are nothing more than a band-aid when only a tourniquet can stop the source of economic, societal, and cultural hemorrhaging. Finally, as many rural hospitals are already being forced to close, the $25 per hour minimum wage for anyone employed in health care will only exacerbate this trend.
Andy Caldwell
When formerly entry level-low skill jobs are now reserved for permanent career status employees with little to no turn over, where do young people needing to build their own job skills now enter the workforce?