Fiscal Policy: A city teetering on the brink of insolvency passes a minimum wage that would reach $13 by 2019, higher than the minimum elsewhere in a state that just elected a Republican governor. What could go wrong?
Ignoring the first rule of holes (when you're in one, stop digging), the Chicago City Council, in a Tuesday emergency session called by Mayor and former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, voted 44-5 to raise the city's minimum wage from the current statewide level of $8.25 an hour to $10 on July 1, with future increases bringing it to $13 by 2019. After that, it will be pegged to inflation.What's the emergency? Emanuel wanted to jump the gun on any minimum-wage bill that might come out of the state legislature in Springfield, particularly after the election of Republican Bruce Rauner as governor. Such legislation is said to bar cities from raising their minimums above the state's. Rauner has said that any minimum-wage increases should be part of a package that promotes growth without reducing competitiveness.
"Raising the minimum wage doesn't help somebody (who is) unemployed, and it doesn't help somebody who's employed and who could get unemployed because of the lack of competitiveness that raising the minimum wage could engender," Rauner said.
The Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, Illinois Hotel and Lodging Association and Illinois Restaurant Association all lobbied against the Chicago-only increase, arguing that it would give suburban business a 57% labor-cost advantage.
"Competitiveness" isn't found in the leftist lexicon, but the concept of a living wage is. This notion says that employees should be paid based not on the value of their work but on the demands of their lifestyles. Street protests and the lobbying of pandering policymakers have replaced a good education and an improved skill set.





















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