Noted Economics Expert Rep. Rashida Tlaib Calls for a $20 Minimum Wage

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., left, joined at right by Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., listens to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2019. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Nothing has to make sense anymore when it comes to policy proposals from Democrats.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib, recently exposed for being a crazy person at a Trump rally in 2016, spoke at a “One Fair Wage” event in Detroit, MI today. There, she called for a minimum wage hike, not to $15, which is already double what it is now, but $20 an hour.

Because losing 1.3 million jobs wouldn’t be enough I guess.

Far-Left Rep. Rashida Tlaib calls for a $20 minimum wage

The Congressional Budget Office recently said a $15 minimum wage would destroy 1.3 million jobs.

A $20 minimum wage would destroy even more jobs. pic.twitter.com/ILhaHht06k

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) July 22, 2019

Excerpt via The Daily Caller.

“Big fights like this one, $15. When we started it, it should have been $15. Now I think it should be $20 … It should be $20 an hour. $18-20 an hour,” Tlaib said in a video posted by America Rising on Monday.

Tlaib and Michigan Democrat Debbie Dingell participated in an event called “Server for an Hour” to support the Raise the Wage Act that passed the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives Thursday.

That’s some serious wage inflation she’s wanting. By what logic should it be $20? Why not $50? Heck, $100 sounds nice.

Such artificial forces on the jobs market would, of course, end in disaster. Most businesses work on very thin margins. More than doubling the wage they have to pay for menial jobs would result in widespread layoffs, cutting of hours, and the further overworking of salaried employees. No matter how empathetic Democrats believe they are being, no amount of “feels” overrides economic realities.

We saw that with Bernie Sanders this week. When faced with the fact that he wasn’t paying his campaign staffers $15 an hour, he didn’t raise their pay. No, he cut their hours. We saw the same thing when Obamacare mandated employee health insurance for people working over 30 hours. Liberals can keep foisting these ridiculous rules on companies but all it’s going to do is hurt the economy and hurt the workers.

The harsh truth is that the minimum wage was never meant to be a living wage. It can not be a living wage without putting millions of people out of work entirely. Someone mopping floors is simply not worth $15-$20 an hour. The person taking orders at McDonalds is not valuable enough to be paid $15-$20 an hour. Labor is, and always has been a commodity. It’s worth is determined by its ability to produce economic benefits for employers. The government attempting to artificially set the worth of menial labor just accelerates the path to automation.

Sheer economic ignorance plagues much of the Democratic party at this point, but the most outspoken voices on that front continue to be Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar. These are not serious people. They have no idea what it’s like to run a business, nor manage a payroll. Their proposed ideas would destroy jobs, put millions out of work, and depress the economy as businesses are forced to cut productivity or close altogether.

It should also be noted that Tlaib served tables at this event, basically slumming it so she can say she knows what it’s like to make minimum wage. If restaurants were forced to pay servers minimum wage, much less $20 an hour, it would destroy the restaurant industry. For those that could survive, near full automation would become the norm decades earlier than anticipated. The fact is that most waiters and waitresses make far more per hour on tips than they would getting paid minimum wage.

Tlaib and the Democrats in Congress who are pushing this doubling of the minimum wage are going to end up hurting a lot of people, causing a lot more poverty, and destroying a lot of businesses. But they’ll get to make the rounds on the cable networks talking about how much they care. In the end, isn’t that what really matters here?

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