RALEIGH – If you want to know what we’re for in North Carolina if the 2020 elections sweep in Democratic control of the N.C. General Assembly, simply look at the bills they are championing now as an emboldened minority. The latest peak at a hypothetical Democrat-controlled state legislature is a push mandate $15 an hour minimum wage for every employee in the Old North State.
From WRAL:
“Democratic lawmakers and worker advocates got behind an effort Tuesday to raise North Carolina’s minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 an hour by 2024.
Lawmakers stressed their plan would gradually increase the minimum wage to make the transition easier for employers. After 2024, the minimum wage would be indexed to keep pace with inflation. […]
“Our bill is about making sure that everyone who works full time can earn a living wage, that everyone can afford the basics and that everyone has a fair opportunity to work hard and succeed, including people with disabilities, people who care for our homes and our families, people who serve our food and the people who grow it,” Fisher said.
The proposal would also eliminate exemptions to minimum-wage rules for farm workers and household help and phase them out for restaurant workers who get tips.
Gov. Roy Cooper last month called for an increase in North Carolina’s minimum wage and said it need not be the $15-an-hour phase-in many Democrats have called for.
“We need to work with the General Assembly to see how high we can get it,” Cooper told WRAL News. “$15 is an admirable goal.”[…]”
The Left-leaning media coverage is sure to include a lot of sob stories about minimum wage workers, playing on compassion and need to sell Big Government ideas of forced redistribution.
While the bill is phased in over time, it will no doubt cause dislocations for small-business owners across the state. The simple laws of economics related to labor costs are not difficult to understand – labor cost goes up, bottom lines are squeezed. That squeeze means pushing teetering businesses right over the edge, or employers simply reducing the number of employees they have in order to keep the doors open.
And as Cooper asserts, $15 an hour is not their final goal; they want it much higher than that. If they are afforded the legislative keys to North Carolina after 2020, they will no doubt blow out the engine with their Big Government mandates. Thinking into the future, imagine that this were to pass and our current economic growth slows, or, God forbid, a recession hits. Employers big and small would be facing jacked up labor costs handed down by politicians at just the time that economic activity is squeezing their business.
If it sounds like a recipe for disaster; it is. As is the case with nearly every Big Government policy proposal advocated for by Cooper and company.
Read more here.
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