Job-Killing Living Wages
12th July 2013
Read it. A reaction to the D.C. city council’s shooting theirconstituents in the wallet.
Washington DC’s city council has “tentatively” passed an ordinance that would raise the minimum wage from $8.25 ($1 more than the federal minimum wage) to $12.50 per hour. But this ordinance only applies to “non-union shops that are at least 75,000 square feet and whose parent companies gross above $1 billion annually.” Guess what company fits that description.
Oh, gee, let me scratch my head and think…. This is effectively what we lawyers call a ‘bill of pains and penalties‘, in which a legislative body just decides to poop on somebody they don’t like without bothering to go through the normal legal rigamarole. Historically this has been held to be unconstitutional as a violation of the ‘no bill of attainder’ clause, but nowadays nobody bothers with or cares much about the Constitution, especially in Democrat strongholds like D.C.
The left excuses this discrimination by calling it a “living wage” ordinance. But why is it that only employees of WalMart, and not employees of smaller retail shops, supermarkets, restaurants, or other businesses?
Well, maybe they lied….
Ironically, over the last decade three successive Washington DC mayors worked hard to attract WalMart to build stores in inner-city neighborhoods. WalMart was reluctant to build in those areas due to crime, but finally agreed to open six stores in the district. “We’ve been praying for food in this neighborhood for about 40 years,” said the resident of one neighborhood where WalMart was planning to build.
Sounds like another case of Lucy and the football to me.
Meanwhile, the left-wing Grist magazine chortles over a requirement in Cape Cod, Massachusetts for any big-box retailers to do an “economic impact analysis” before receiving a permit to build. The retailers will presumably be denied permits if the analysis shows that existing businesses might be harmed by the lower prices and wider selection of goods offered by new superstores.
And of course ‘progressives’, being the Party of the People, can’t have that.