If there is one thing that the militarized warzone with the weapons ban (and which makes east Ukraine look like a kindergarten) namely Chicago, did not need in order to fall further into social chaos and disarray, it is a new tidal wave of unemployment: people freshly without jobs who for lack of better options would likely join the daily survival of the fittest routine on the streets of the windy city. And a tidal wave of unemployment is precisely what Chicago is likely to get if, as a group of Chicago aldermen have proposed, the minimum wage in the nation’s third-largest city is nearly doubled to $15 an hour. Why $15? Because according to recently striking McDonalds line cooks, it’s only fair, and is the minimum pay that fast-food workers have sought during national protests.
Chicago won’t be the first to push for a city-level minimum pay raise: Seattle Mayor Ed Murray announced a plan earlier in May to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, making it the first major U.S. city to commit to such a high base level of pay. The proposal awaits approval by the city council. New York and San Diego also are considering such raises.
However, unlike other cities, Chicago is unique in that it has not one but two wage hike proposals on the table. As Reuters reports:
The group proposing the wage increase is separate from a panel Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel named last week among aldermen, labor and business leaders to provide recommendations for raising the minimum wage.
Alderman Ricardo Munoz said 12 to 15 of the 50 council members support the proposal to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour and he expected more to join.
Illinois lawmakers on Wednesday approved an advisory referendum for the November ballot that asks whether the state’s minimum wage should be raised to $10 an hour from $8.25. Governor Pat Quinn said he would sign the bill.
As for the justification, it’s a cliched as that old Keynesian broken window fallacy:
“Study after study demonstrates that when you put money into the pockets of consumers, they spend it,” Munoz said. “They don’t hoard it in their mattresses.”
And what does study after study show employers do to their employees when a mandatory and unexpected intervention by the nanny state tells them they have no choice but to see their profit collapse if they keep their existing workforce and have zero chance of passing on higher labor costs to an insolvent consumer? Do they, perhaps, fire a whole lot of people and tell those who still have jobs they have no choice but to work double as hard for the new minimum wage?
We should find out very soon.
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1heLvV2 Tyler Durden