Minimum wage jumps to $9 an hour

Here’s what the minimum wage does: it destroys tens of thousands of jobs to increase the pay of tens of thousands of other jobs. It does this by increasing government coercion over our lives even more than it already does.

So nothing good can come from the new $9 per hour California minimum wage imposed on July 1. It’s also scheduled to rise to $10 next year.

As I’ve warned before, the main thing the minimum wage does is destroy the jobs of the poor, particularly blacks and Hispanics. Their supposed liberal friends in government and labor unions, instead of helping them, hurt them.

I wrote:

[Economist Walter] Williams wrote a classic study on this in 1977, “Government Sanctioned Restraints that Reduce Economic Opportunity for Minorities.”

He pointed out, for example, that if someone’s labor value is only at the minimum wage, but not higher, then raising the minimum wage means that person will lose his job.

Youth and minorities

Williams wrote that two groups of people especially are affected by the minimum wage: youngsters, who have little work experience; and minorities, who may have suffered discrimination, or went to bad schools. And most affected of all are minority youngsters. “These workers are not only made unemployable by the minimum wage, but their opportunity to upgrade their skills through on-the-job training also are severely limited,” he wrote.

He noted that youth employment always is higher than general unemployment, even during prosperous times. And black youth unemployment has been especially bad; it “has ranged from two to three times the unemployment for white youths.” Black youth unemployment, he reported in 1977, in some areas is as high as 50 percent.

That’s one dismal statistic that hasn’t changed in 35 years. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that today black youth unemployment remains at 50 percent.

San Francisco

Of course, minimum-wage backers point to San Francisco, which has an even higher minimum wage yet lower unemployment than the state. But San Francisco and Silicon Valley are the headquarters of the global Internet industry. Their median-priced home values also exceed $1 million. Meaning only millionaires can afford to live there, and millionaires can afford to pay higher wages than the rest of the state.

San Francisco is not San Bernardino.

Which is why blacks have been fleeing San Francisco for cheaper areas inland, or in some other state. The city’s restriction on building homes and apartments, combined with all the other preposterous regulations, have made it unaffordable.