Letters: Minimum-wage hike destroys jobs

E.J. McMahon's column about the State Assembly's push to hike the minimum wage was spot-on ["A Silver bullet -- aimed right at jobs," Opinion, Jan. 12]. Such hikes are job-killers for low-skill and entry-level workers, who are often teens and minorities.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) says that it is impossible to expect the head of a household to survive on the current minimum wage, which misses the essential point that most minimum-wage earners are not heads of households, and those who are receive the earned income tax credit and an array of government subsidies to pay for food, health care and home heating. Tote up all the subsidies, and a minimum-wage job is effectively more than $25 per hour.

When I lobbied in Albany on behalf of small businesses, Silver wouldn't even consider a lower "training wage" at current levels that could rise after 6 or 9 months on the job. He just kept repeating his "head of household" argument. That was when I publicly referred to Silver and his Democratic colleagues as "economically illiterate," a characterization I hold to today. The only other explanation is that he is so jaded that he'd gladly take the politically popular path, knowing it will certainly lead to fewer job opportunities for the working poor.

This is just one example of Silver's decades of leadership, which have been politically superb, but economically and morally bankrupt. He had lots of help along the way from fantastically flawed governors and a weak cadre of Senate Republican leaders, but only Silver has held absolute power over the Assembly during the past two decades of economic decay, and the concomitant loss of roughly 1 million young people who moved to other states for jobs and opportunity.

He's been a stolid force behind unaffordable spending, increasing taxes, passing unfunded mandates on local governments, and giving the trial bar a free hand to destroy private enterprise and any sense of personal responsibility.

Mark Alesse, Kittery Point, Maine

Editor's note: The writer was the state director for the National Federation of Independent Business for 18 years and chairman of New Yorkers for Civil Justice Reform, both lobbying organizations.
 

Why the halfhearted measures? Just increase the minimum wage to $100 an hour. That way everyone would be rich. What could go wrong?

Bill Lau, Kings Park