Opinion: Seattle’s experience shows liberals are clueless about raising the minimum wage

To the editor: To anyone with any understanding of economics, it is obvious that randomly raising the minimum wage helps no one. (“Minimum wage fight may heat up after new study finds jobs and hours fell in Seattle,� June 26)

It has been shown time and again that employers will respond, as those in Seattle did after that city’s minimum wage increase, as follows:

They will cut hours or staff. If they hire at all, it will be part-timers to avoid paying benefits. They will also raise prices, which keeps the inflation spiral going up.

Bleeding-heart liberals do not seem to care about the small businessman eventually forced to close because the government thinks it can run his business better than he does. He established an agreement with his employees to work for a certain wage; no one put a gun to their heads.

As for low-wage workers, how about simply working up in the free-enterprise system? If one is a dishwasher, for example, no one is preventing that individual from becoming a waiter or taking a class in restaurant management to improve his lot in life.

Rick Solomon, Lake Balboa

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