California governor Jerry Brown said Monday that his state’s new minimum wage law makes more political sense than economic sense.
At a ceremony in Los Angeles commemorating the plan that will raise the state’s wage floor to $15 an hour, Brown slipped the politics reference into an argument about the morality of the minimum wage.
The Sacramento Bee reports:
California’s policy is an aggressive, untested idea, as only local governments (mostly in large cities) have taken this bold a step. The move takes the minimum wage from $10 an hour to $10.50 on January 1 next year for businesses above 25 employees, and $15 by 2022.
Even pro-minimum wage economists have doubted the effectiveness of a $15-an-hour rate, with President Obama’s former chief economist Alan Krueger saying that such a high level “could well be counterproductive”.
And costly. A legislative analysis released last week estimated that the California law will eventually cost taxpayers $3.6 billion in higher pay for government workers.
(h/t Reason)
