Why Raising the National Minimum Wage by 39% Is Bad

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Yes, Kevin Knows What He Is Talking About

Erin Burnett asks Kevin O’Leary (a well-known 1%er) about Barack Obama’s latest quest to raise the national minimum wage by 39%. This is his response —

Kevin O’Leary (paraphrased):

“Our problem is that we don’t have enough jobs. What we need is to create more jobs. And the way we do that is with less government, less regulations.

“When I’m thinking about the small business owner with 5 employees that wants to hire 2 more employees, the last thing that they want is for you to raise their labor costs 39%, because then he would not be able to hire anyone.”

You can hear and see Kevin O’Leary’s exact wording in the video above.

What I Think:

This is true. Unilaterally increasing the costs to run any business can only hurt small business owners, which is where the majority of ‘jobs’ originate. The big dogs (big business owners), like WalMart, McDonalds, etc can get through it with few (if any) problems — they have the profits to cover changes like that.

The small business owner — like me and so many other people that I know — do not have the funds to cover those changes.

Barack Obama Comic

Via the cartoonist for Detroit News, Henry Payne: Obama — “Unemployed? I’ll increase the cost to hire you by 40%!”

This means that there will be an unavoidable slow on the creation of jobs in the economy ► meaning less jobs ► less people employed ► more expensive products and services.

All of those elements create more people in poverty, while enriching the other “luckier” people that have jobs ever so slightly.

This is a bad policy, through and through.

The real responsibility for creating jobs does not lie in government regulation, but rather: in smart, resourceful, and innovative entrepreneurs that know how to add great value to society and know how to manage resources to multiply them.

Entrepreneurs are the key to everything.

Increase the amount of intelligent entrepreneurs ►► increase the quality of life for everyone that these entrepreneurs touch.

For further reading, check out these articles:

Associated Press

Reason