Governor Andrew Cuomo is blaming the profit motive for employer resistance to raising New York’s statewide minimum wage to $15 an hour.
As a matter of fact, even some notable liberal economists who generally support a higher federal minimum wage are not in favor of going up as far as $15, as the Manhattan Institute’s Alex Armlovich pointed out in this must-read Daily News op-ed over the weekend.
Yet the governor, so far, has yet to acknowledge any possible tradeoffs from a policy that would make it much more expensive for employers to hire inexperienced or less skilled (i.e., less productive) entry-level workers. Although a $15-an-hour minimum would approach the current median wage for all workers in upstate regions—putting many jobs potentially at risk—the governor says opposition to the proposal can only be motivated by business self-interest.
Here’s how he put it in a speech at a Harlem church yesterday:
So we want to raise the minimum wage and we want to raise the minimum wage to 15 dollars. This, my friends, is going to be the challenge. Why? Because the companies don’t want to pay the workers more. Why? Because if the companies pay the workers more, then the companies make less money. There’s less profit, less profit, less profit. I know there’s less profit, but there’s something called fairness and equity and justice. And justice – that’s what we’re asking for. Justice.
[emphasis added]
Note: the governor didn’t use the words “selfish” or “greedy,” but that was the implication. Note, also, the implication that raising the current $8.75 minimum wage by 71 percent over the next six years (including next year’s already scheduled increase to $9) ultimately boils down to a question of whether companies make “less money”—as opposed to whether some firms will continue to make money at all. Apparently, it has never occurred to Cuomo that there are employers in New York who could not afford to raise wages so steeply without endangering their businesses’ continued existence, or slashing the number of people they employ, or both.
If “fairness and equity and justice” demand a $15 an hour wage, then all employers who disagree, or resist, are unfair and unjust. More than few would no doubt bridle at that implication.
(To get the full flavor, check out the video version here, starting around the 12:34-minute mark.)
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