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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThis is crazy: Taxpayers to subsidize NY's higher minimum wage
Really, really fucked up. Asshole legislators cave to big business. Now there's a shocker. As far as I know this is unprecedented.
Here in "business unfriendly" Vermont the minimum wage is $8.60 an hour and is indexed to inflation. The unemployment rate here is 4.7%.
A hike in New York's minimum wage is a big win for Democrats, but a provision buried inside the tentative state budget shows taxpayers will be paying much of the bill.
The "minimum wage reimbursement credit" is spelled out at the bottom of a revenue bill in the budget separate from the minimum wage measure. The credit would reimburse employers for part of the difference in wages from the current $7.25 minimum wage as it rises to $9 an hour by 2016.
Once it reaches $9 an hour, employers would pay 40 cents and taxpayers $1.35 of the extra $1.75 an hour workers are paid.
Employers including big-box department stores and fast-food chains will get tax credits for seasonal employees, ages 16 to 19, who are still in school, which some advocates for low-income residents say will hurt adult workers.
More at:
http://news.yahoo.com/taxpayers-subsidize-nys-higher-minimum-143533956.html
The article goes on to say that most progressive groups and low income advocates oppose this and that it was written in by repulivcans to "protect the business community".
Fresh_Start
(11,330 posts)otherwise you get the ridiculousness of the person paying their own wages....
The Magistrate
(95,237 posts)But at least it makes plain and clear that employers paying sub-subsistence wages depend for their profits on subsidies from tax-payers. The Earned Income Credit and Food Stamps are really such subsidies to employers who pay starvation wages, and this is just more of the same....
cali
(114,904 posts)This is just infuriating.
msongs
(67,193 posts)hibbing
(10,076 posts)Hi,
Socialize the cost and privatize the profits, it is the American Way!
Peace