Labor

Submitted by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

Colorado was among the four states where voters approved a minimum wage hike in November. Among the specific provisions for the new wage hike was the stipulation that tipped workers — such as waiters who receive tips and are paid below the standard minimum wage — will receive a mandated wage hike of 99 cents.

Naturally, this will lead to an increase in costs for restaurant owners who will then seek to raise prices and/or reduce costs. KDVR in Denver reports: 

In January 2009, just three days after his inauguration, an arrogant President Obama, a "community organizer" and one-term senator from Illinois, proclaimed to then Republican Whip Eric Cantor that "elections have consequences, and at the end of the day, I won."  Unfortunately, he was absolutely right and the consequences of Obama's election, having already crushed the coal industry, are about to bring the restaurant industry crashing down as well.

Over the past few years, as Amazon's distribution network has grown at a near-exponential pace, so has its workforce. As the chart below shows, starting in 2010 and continuing through the third quarter, Amazon has seen a staggering increase in its mostly part-time employment: from 28,300 to over 306,000.

For months, if not years, we've warned that conflicted politicians and union bosses pursue a perverse set of goals in their management of pension funds, most of which have nothing to do with the application of sound financial principles. Here's how we summarized the situation back in the summer (see "An Unsolvable Math Problem: Public Pensions Are Underfunded By As Much As $8 Trillion"):

Just over a year ago, we reported that in what was set to be a pilot experiment in "universal basic income", Finland would become the first nation to hand out "helicopter money" in the form of cash directly to a select group of citizens.