The $15 Federal minimum wage is uniquely designed to harm the South.
For those who are watching the Democrats push for a $15 per hour minimum wage, you may suspect that they do so out of either a love for their lower socioeconomic constituency or a hatred of those who reside in the top economic 1%. Such a view likely has some truth. A $15 per hour minimum wage is very popular with those in the lowest economic run. That stated, the real reason is more complex: the Democrat North is losing massive amounts of income for their far left socialist agendas.
The combination of the Trump Tax Reform, higher costs of living, high local/state taxes, and fewer competitive advantages in an increasingly technological and/or global manufacturing environment, has made it impossible for Northern and Western Far Left governors, like New York’s Cuomo or California’s Newsom, to make ends meet. In order to level the playing field, they need costs of living to level out across the United States. In other words, as long as the South does not have to pay its employees as much as socialist Yankee states, its cost of living remains lower and thus, more attractive to businesses.
Consequently, the push for a $15 per hour minimum wage is purposely designed to bolster the North and harm the South.
After all, it is important to note, the minimum wage can be set by any state at any time. None of these Democrats need a federally imposed minimum wage. Rather, a state and even a municipality may choose a higher minimum wage at will. Cities like New York, Washington, DC, and Seattle have already taken such steps. Nothing is stopping them from raising their own minimum wages, where the costs of living can exceed four times that of most exurban Southern towns. The fact is, they know that raising their minimum wages higher, without corresponding Southern increases, only hurts the economic competitiveness of Marxist-Yankee governments.
More importantly, as those municipalities realize the deleterious economic consequences of a higher minimum wage, they find themselves losing economic power – and by extension, political power – to the fiscally disciplined South. Case in point was the ability of Georgia to literally brush off Hollywood threats over the Heartbeat Bill – something that state may not have thought possible 25 or 30 years ago. Marxist-Yankee politicians need a federal law to “even the playing field” in a game within which they find themselves losing on almost every front. Let us pray that none of the politicians in the South take the bait.
At present, only two states enjoy budget surpluses and Triple-A Credit Ratings: Georgia and Florida. One of those states, Florida, has no income tax. Both states are so fiscally disciplined that they enjoy higher credit ratings than the United States Government that produces the very dollars those states use as currency. As for the rest of the South? With the exception of Maryland and Virginia, every Southern state’s tax receipts ensure a balanced budget (i.e., no deficit) by June 30th of the next fiscal year. Not bad for a region that is “dumb” and “inbred.”
By contrast, New York’s budget deficit is $2.6 billion and it holds more than $380 billion in debt as a state, as of the time of this writing. California is facing a $1.6 billion deficit and $470 billion debt. Illinois is facing a whopping $7 billion budget deficit and holds $160 billion in debt. Unless those states can stop the bleeding of companies moving from their socialist utopias to the South, they will completely collapse. A major contributor to this fiscal disaster is the decision by those states to increase the minimum wage and then, correspondingly, raise the level of social welfare subsidies to meet a newer poverty level.
Meanwhile, the South not only enjoys unprecedented economic prosperity, it continues to enjoy the moral high ground. We enjoy clean towns, better standards of living, and streets devoid of both needles and poop. We enjoy governments that protect the unborn and execute the unrighteous. We live in states that need to be dragged before the Federal Supreme Court and forced to surrender Godly icons.
Let’s keep it that way. Keep Yankee political-economic and social policies up North or out West, where they belong. We do not need or want the Federal Government to impose a higher mandatory minimum wage that will only help the North keep pace with a South they disdain.
When the time comes, the South will raise minimum wages, on a state by state basis, as they deem fit to do so.
The son of a recent Irish immigrant and another with roots to Virginia since 1670. I love both my Irish and Southern Nations with a passion. Florida will always be my country. Dissident support here: Padraig Martin is Dixie on the Rocks (buymeacoffee.com)
Damn right! When politicians clamour for any kind of wage hike, count on it, the vast majority of the time it is not intended to relieve the suffering of the poor worker bee, but is a backdoor scheme for collecting more taxes. This is also why I have never supported government-enforced overtime pay; there is a very good reason that persons who work overtime hours at their various places of employment incessantly complain about the paltry amount this additional hourly income they actually take home in a given week.
Much ado was made last year in “Red States” about their/our lower teacher pay, beginning in West Virginia and quickly spreading like a conflagration, as such movements are apt to do. In Oklahoma – at the time among the cheapest of the fifty states to live, which of course benefits everyone, including teachers, but many of them are apparently too stupid to understand this – our teachers staged a statewide “walkout” in demand of higher average teacher pay, based on the premise that they ranked 49th in teacher compensation, as though this number means anything in and of itself. It of course doesn’t, as any moron knows.
I wrote about it a bunch at the time, pointing out that this was/is purely idiotic reasoning that, either intentionally or not (I don’t care which, it amounts to the same thing at the end of the day) our teachers had failed to take into consideration numerous factors that are responsible for that 49th ranking, not the least of which is, as you point out, the extremely higher cost of living in the Yankee/northern states such as New York, where it was said the state is “very generous” in compensating its teachers. I don’t know what kind of monetary value one can place on personal safety and peace of mind, but it is worth something. Somehow our teachers don’t seem to “get” the value of this benefit either.
As I said, there are many factors involved in this that a five minute long internet search will yield, such as the aforementioned cost of living index, average household income in Oklahoma among the general populace (which is now below that of teachers, which is nuts!), percentage of the State’s population employed by government (one of the highest in the nation along with Virginia at 21%, as compared to e.g. Texas at 11-12%) and so on and so forth. I could go on and on about this, but I’ll stop there with my little rant.
Good article!
Anybody who makes minimum wage will be poor no matter how high you raise it: Because its the least money you can make. Minimum wage employees will always be at the bottom of the economic ladder. The rest of the economy will adjust which means prices will go up. (but i bet salaries won’t go up in direct proportion )
On the other hand, if it keeps northern businesses (and their political activities ) from moving down, it might be worth it.
Wrecking the south’s economy would be a good thing, its one of the things that help spare us from the poz in the past. Where woke capital goes ruin soon follows. Perhaps the shock of a economic downturn is the catalyst needed to shake some of the disillusions still held by the public. You can’t expect a fat, comfortable, content populace to offer resistance to the forces that are destroying us.
Not bad for a region that is “dumb” and “inbred.”
As Michael Hill said, there’s an advantage to letting the Yankees think we’re dumb. It’ll be much easier to defeat people blinded by arrogance.
Another thing to bear in mind; Yankeedom is not the country it was in 1860. It’s much more vulnerable politically, and economically. It’s also extremely vulnerable to disruptions in the supply of foodstuffs, fuel/energy and raw materials. This is particularly true of East Yankeedom.