Thursday, August 6, 2015

Republicans pushing idea that raising the minimum wage makes workers unhappy! Does that work for CEO's too?

My conservative friend in Milwaukee emailed me a "I told you so" story about the horrors of raising the minimum wage, in this case at WalMart. I'm guessing he doesn't read these stories or he just doesn't understand them. Here's the scary headline:
"An Unintended Consequence of Wal-Mart Pay Raise: Unhappy Workers"
The higher minimum wage doesn't make workers "unhappy," it makes senior employees unhappy knowing their wages are now closer to less experienced worker wages. Another words...ENVY.

Nothing has changed for more experienced workers; they didn't lose any money or take a lifestyle hit. But envy, pushed by Republicans at every turn in the last decade, is now the norm: 
In interviews and in hundreds of comments on Facebook, Wal-Mart employees are calling the move unfair to senior workers who got no increase and now make the same or close to what newer, less experienced colleagues earn. New workers started making a minimum of $9 an hour in April and will get at least $10 an hour in February.
The whole story tells us something different, which my conservative friend must have skipped over:
Along with bumping up the minimum wage, it increased the amount workers receive when promoted, boosted pay for some managers and raised the maximum pay for all hourly positions.
The point is this: Raises, like the hike in the minimum wage, have been around since the dawn of man. If hiking the minimum wage is so bad, isn't any raise at any income level just as bad? Of course, but the wealthy just get richer because they deserve it, unlike the poor who don't. And it is pitting people against people, just like it has for centuries.

It's only an issue when the poor make more money. Funny how that works.

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