St. Louis Mimimum wage decline from $10 to $7.70
I came across an interesting story recently about a decline in the minimum wage in St Louis. I am neutral to minimum wage laws. I am a small business owner and when I have hired people I always pay them a much better rate than the actual minimum wage. Sure there is a point where my margins would be impacted, but I believe in the golden rule principle of paying a person a fair wage for a hard days work.
In Missouri the legislature voted to repeal a 2015 experiment in St Louis to raise wages to $10 an hour and drop it back to the state minimum wage of $7.70. It also stripped local municipalities from opting to create their own minimum wage.
But what I find very interesting about the St. Louis approach is it is very hypocritical of the Missouri legislature to enact a law that affects one city in the state. During the health care debate it was very important to the states to have local control of health care. In Republican dominated states it seems that all power should be vested locally in the ideal world. But apparently not if it affects businesses. I find this very anti-republican and definitely anti-democracy. Shouldn't local jurisdictions be allowed to make their own legislation? If it fails and wages are raised too high the result will be businesses moving their physical location to outside of St. Louis. That is very captilistic approach. Also if it fails the politicians who enacted the legislation would be ousted in a democratic world and the new politicians would be free to lower or adjust as necessary for their local jurisdiction.
This seems like a terrible precedent and power grab by a state to limit its local jurisdictions from using its own local sovereignty to adjust to the will of its people.
Again I am fairly neutral. I don't live in Missouri and have no skin in the fight. I just see this as being hypocritical and a poor decision by the Governor and one party in the legislature.
Image source:
Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33984