Minimum Wage Bill Makes It Out Of Committee

A bill that would raise our stat'es minimum wage to $8 an hour beginning next year and then skyrocket all the way up to $8.50 in 2018 made it out of the Senate Labor Committee, barely. By a vote of 4-3 those seven people decided to let their peers actually discuss and vote on whether or not their fellow citizens are being served by an hourly wage that has remained the same for the last seven years. Governor Edwards, who made raising the state's minimum wage one of the core promises of his campaign, has personally lobbied the legislature on this issue and claims it would go a long way to eliminating child poverty state wide, noting that 80% of the minimum wage earners in our state are women, many with children at home. An 'investment in our state', he calls it.

Speaking out against the raise in this particular article on Louisiana Radio Network I'm referencing and brilliantly editing is Mark Johnson, listed only as Baton Rouge business owner, and apparently so wildly successful neither a google search, glass door snooping, or linked in look around turns up anything other than the fact there are waaaay to many Mark Johnsons in this country. According to "Mark", if the companies he does business with every day are staffed by minimum wage earners, this outlandish raise our Governor wishes to lavish on our neighbors will so devastate his bottom line he only sees two ways out. "Do you absorb the cost and make less money, or do you cut employees and make the same amount of money? Because that's your choices.", said "Johnson", proving that even those with the mental flexibility of an adobe brick can get themselves interviewed by the news from time to time.

Don't get me wrong, I think insisting that fast food workers be paid $15 an hour as soon as they hit the floor is insane. But I also believe that this modest increase benefits the people it's aimed at and the state in general by way of increased buying power for goods and services which in turn all trickles more tax money back into our broke and bumming-a-smoke state's coffers. Let's see how it spins out from here, and enjoy our wonderfully more exotic and premium priced cold beer and tobacco products.