If hiking the minimum wage by government fiat is so effective at making the poor prosperous, why are four of the five American cities with the highest rate of unsheltered homelessness in Calipornia: San Franshitsco, Los Angeles, Santa Rosa and San Jose.
Deep- blue Seattle joins the Calipornia municipalities in the top five.
The
DEMOCRAT-dominated District of Columbia has the highest unsheltered homeless rate in the country - 5.8 times the U.S. rate.
DEMOCRAT-dominated Blue York is next, followed by Hawaii, Oregon and Calipornia - all under one-party rule.
These five states together comprise 20% of the overall U.S. population but 45% of the country’s homeless population.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-state-is-home-to-nearly-half-of-all-people-living-on-the-streets-in-the-us-2019-09-18
I remember a case where Long Beach raised their minimum wage (this was back in the early 90's) and made employer health insurance near mandatory. One of the harder hit business sectors was that for janitorial and maid staff at things like hotels and other commercial businesses. These throughout Long Beach fired their employees in those jobs eliminating them from their staff where those jobs existed.
They were then replaced by employees of contractor companies that did that sort of work that were not based in Long Beach. Thus, these businesses could pay their employees a much lower wage even as they worked in Long Beach. This was because legally, they weren't
employed by a company that was in Long Beach.
The result was that many residents of Long Beach lost their jobs. The city lost revenue, and the jobs still got done at a lower wage by employers gaming the system.
Here in Arizona when the minimum wage laws were changed about the same time, the new law had no exemptions written into it. One particular industry / business sector basically ceased to exist within months losing about 7,000 jobs. That was companies that employed the severely handicapped.
Previously, these companies employed severely handicapped persons to do very marginal jobs like stuff envelopes, or other simple tasks they could handle, but were allowed to pay a much lower wage that didn't impact their government or insurance benefits they received because of being severely handicapped. At the same time, many of these individuals wanted to work at these jobs because it gave them a feeling of self-worth, accomplishment, and social activity.
With the new much higher wage that would have to be paid those companies couldn't afford the pay and those receiving it would have had their other benefits outside employment threatened with ending--something they could ill afford. So, their jobs disappeared. It was bad for them, bad for the economy, bad for the employers.
As for homelessness... I doubt raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour will find more of them employed. On the other hand, it may very well increase their numbers...
