Raising minimum wage to $15 would cost 1.4 million jobs, CBO says

Like I said before:

Evidence shows that raising wages can cut  expensive employee turnover in half and trigger a shift to new business models, as Seattle and other local markets show. This adaptation—which is a crucial part of the future of retail more generally—is just one thing that pessimistic economic projections of the effects of a federal minimum wage hike (like that by the Congressional Budget Office) ignore or downplay.

But it’s even less possible to survive on restaurant and other service work that relies on tips and is still paid a subminimum rate: $5 an hour or less in 38 states. Heavy reliance on tips rather than wages meant that for many workers laid off during the pandemic, total earnings were too low to even qualify them for unemployment insurance.  

What’s more, tipping and the cruel logic of a subminimum wage are vestiges of slavery. After emancipation, employers in the South mobilized to keep Black labor as cheap as possible, winning the legal right to have workers in key occupations (such as waitressing) survive on customer tips rather than employer-paid wages. To this day, food servers’ reliance on tips makes restaurant customers very powerful, contributing to the worst incidence of reported sexual harassment of any industry.

Ditch diggers and doctors should earn the same amount, Comrade.