Rep. Honadel's Lies: Family Bread winners don't work for minimum wages, and Higher Minimum Wages result in lost jobs. So Wrong!

The sad fact is “19 states have their minimum wages set higher than the federal mandate. Wisconsin isn't one of them.” We’re eating the other state's dust on converting to green energy, health care reform, mass transportation, gay marriage, legalized pot, and now the minimum wage.

Bubble right wing politics has a lock on Wisconsin, where think tank myths and failed theories of the marketplace abound, and real world advances continue to benefit other states. It's Scott Walker's playground now, and a blueprint for the entire country.

Republicans seem to have missed the U.S. conversion from a manufacturing economy to a service economy. Remember that giant sucking sound? It happened guys. 

  

The false premise #1: Families don’t rely on minimum wage jobs. Fox 6:

“…we look at the minimum wage not as a family-supporting wage, just as an entry-level wage for young people to get their foot in the door for a job in high school,” Rep. Mark Honadel said.

These aren't “entry-level” jobs anymore, but family supporting jobs. 

Honadel’s supporters should ask him why he isn't telling them the truth about our dominant service industry jobs.

The truth is, Honadel’s job so much harder if he faced the truth…like raising the minimum wage. Simple.

False premise #2: High wages kills jobs:

Rep. Mark Honadel (R – South Milwaukee) is a former small business owner. He has studied the impact on businesses and hiring. “I got my hands on some data from Washington, that shows one very, very important fact: every time minimum wage goes up, everybody in the central cities, Hispanics, African-Americans lose jobs.”

He’s doing it for…minorities? Wow, what a compassionate conservative, keeping wages low so people have central city jobs.

The truth contradicts Honadel's mysteriously sourced “data:”

Bloomberg News, April 2012: "[A] wave of new economic research is disproving those arguments about job losses and youth employment. Previous studies tended not to control for regional economic trends that were already affecting employment levels, such as a manufacturing-dependent state that was shedding jobs. The new research looks at micro-level employment patterns for a more accurate employment picture. The studies find minimum-wage increases even provide an economic boost, albeit a small one, as strapped workers immediately spend their raises.” (Source)