Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2014 (Tabled)

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

As has been expressed, aggressively raising the minimum wage like this is counterproductive and will degrade the purchasing power of the present living wage.

The minimum wage does not occur in isolation and my preference would be to eventually phase it out or at least to scale it back as practical in exchange for more efficient and modern approaches that better operate within the broaded context of the economy. Of course, this is a substantial undertaking and completing such enormous tasks and getting enough people focused on it and supportive of such is rather difficult to say the least.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

That section was repealed last summer. The automatic inflation increases of the living wage should bump it up automatically though.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I think the present approach has been ridiculous. We just can't seem to find a set policy and stick to it. We have automatic adjustments and then we always go back and overide them as if they served no purpose at all. Everytime we change it, it has a disruptive effect. Before anyone states it, yes raising the minimum wage from $7.50 to $10.10 has minimimal impact at best, and even assuming that is true, one can certainly see how the situation would be different jumping from $14 to $22 or whatever. Each time you raise it under the latter circumstances, the effect on hiring decisions long term are impacted and long term investments are altered accordingly or not made for fear of us hiking it yet again.

We would be far better off just indentifying the best number, establishing a formulaic set of increases (automatic) and then leave it the hell alone.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

What is more ridiculous is this idea that less than $20 an hour is a living wage.

In many places that would go quite far yes. It depends on where you live. But of course regionalizing it was something you weren't very fond of as I recall.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I guess Yankee's approach is sensible, and I noticed his bill, which I would support if the minimum wage as outlined in it was raised to in fact those $15 per hour we have been talking about. I would think the big issue here is a question of which approach to the issue is preferable to the individual Senators, either the one outlined in this bill, or the one outlined in the bill presented by Senator Yankee. If a majority of Senators should prefer the latter, I wonder if it was not more sensible to go over debating at said bill?

You mean debate it in here as an amendment? I considered that, but the primary purpose is different and the text I outlined was indeed a starting point to provide a clean slate as well as stability moving forward. My personal preference would to at some point move away from the minimum wage but organizing a beefing up of the Nixcome as an alternative would be a tall order seeing as how we barely got the most recent carer's bill finished and the budget (speaks for itself).

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

That said I am open to pursuing an alternative path to the same end point.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Abstain ftr

I am not a fan of tabling motions.

I think as I said before we need to approach a diverse array to boosting wages. We have some need for a bottom floor but to rely on it so heavily is a mistake in a complex modern economy where technology can easily wipe out jobs. We thus need to carefully pursue a balanced approach.

If this bill moves in that direction, I will support it, but if not I will have to oppose it on final passage.