If NYC ever survives a mayor as economically ignorant as Bill de Blasio, it will be nothing short of a miracle. Not only has he been committed to “combating income inequality” by advocating raising taxes on the wealthy, now he also is pushing for a minimum wage hike to more than $13/hour as a means to bolster the economy.
De Blasio recently announced, “It’s time for New York City businesses to take bold action—not only because hardworking New Yorkers deserve a path to the middle class and an opportunity to stay in the middle class—but because giving them that opportunity would do so much to help our economy.”
His brilliant plan is to raise the wages past $13/hour in 2016, and then indexing it to inflation over the next 3 years so that the minimum wage will be $15/hour by 2019. The current wage is $8.75/hour, which will be $9.00 as of January 1, 2016. Where does de Blasio think that extra $4/hour is going to come from? He told the business owners that it’s time do “do your part”.
Unfortunately for the workers of NYC, they have a mayor who doesn’t understand that raising the minimum wage adversely affects those whom the wage hikes purport to help, especially the poorest in NYC. Less persons would be employed at $13/hour and $15/hour than if the minimum wage had not been hiked at all. Put it another way, many would see their hourly wages drop to $0/hour. That is not “opportunity”. That is unmitigated disaster.
First of all Bill de Blasio is a Marxist of the first order. Who the hell did the voters of NYC think they were electing when they pulled the lever bearing his name ? This radical gave aid and comfort to Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas of Nicaragua during the Reagan presidency. If you go to the polls uninformed then you get what you deserve. This unqualified imbecile will undo all the great work done by Rudy and to a lesser extent Bloomberg. Alan Joel, what you failed to mention in your indictment of Bill is that the NYC Council is as far to the left as de Blasio is. Hopefully New Yorkers will learn from their mistakes and limit this mayor to a single term. Even if this occurs the damage that he will do to NYC will take years to undo.