Amendment 2, don't be fooled...!

If you’re not aware of what it is, Amendment 2 is just that, an amendment which is being voted on by Florida voters and requires 60% plus one to become a part of the Florida Constitution.  That is significant because if it was simply a new law/statute, it would be relatively easy to undo it down the road with enough pressure; whereas an amendment is nearly impossible to repeal.  On the federal level, only the 18th Amendment, (alcohol prohibition) was repealed via the 21st Amendment.  On the state level, one doesn’t need a calculator to count how many amendments have been repealed nationwide, or even more than one sheet of paper to list them.

I laid the groundwork above because Floridians are going to be voting on Amendment 2 which would increase the minimum wage drastically, and that will have devastating consequences for businesses, the economy, and the very workers that it “promises” to help.

Before I discuss why drastically higher minimum wage is an unworkable, pie in the sky method for politicians to garner votes at the expense of working Americans, I think a brief synopsis of what kind of jobs are generally “minimum wage jobs” is needed here.  These jobs are mostly for the first time job seeker who is usually a very young person such as a high-schooler getting a part time job for pocket money.  They are designed to be a learning experience in which the new member of the workforce learns the responsibility of showing up on time and doing assigned “menial” tasks such as general labor to include everything from maintenance, stocking shelves, and bagging groceries to flipping burgers and countless other jobs which require minimal skills, and therefore do not command a higher wage.  I.E., with rare exceptions, such jobs are not meant to be career paths.

So let’s look at some of what happens when such measures are put in place.  Paying unskilled workers more than the job is worth results in employers, (business owners) having to raise their prices to cover the added costs, which results in many customers going elsewhere or simply staying put at home.  Additionally, many employers have chosen to replace hourly workers with job eliminating kiosks which pay for themselves fairly quickly, never take a day off, never give a customer a hard time, and don’t have a distracting electronic device glued to their hands.  

A stark example of the results of such measures is Seattle where they implemented a $15.00 minimum wage.  Many owners were forced to cut back on worker hours and as a result, many of the workers wound up making $125.00 less per month, which is a significant loss of income at such levels.

Among the hardest hit industries are the restaurants.  To begin with, most of them fail in the first year under the best of conditions.  Adding the covid pandemic and the new burden of increased wages, and many existing venues will certainly close while many others won’t even open in the first place.  Not to mention that a good server can earn much more than $15.00 per hour and a minimum wage hike would put a major dent in their earnings for all of the reasons listed above.

It gets worse from there.  Clearly first time job opportunities will disappear and therefore on the job training will become a thing of the past.  Supply chains will be affected, and the domino effect will be chaotic.

Before you vote for any outrageous minimum wage hike, do some homework and see how it always turns out and you’ll find that the best way to make more than any government mandated minimum wage is to work hard at whatever job you have, and become an asset to your employer.

Take it from a guy who’s been around the block a few times, higher minimum wages leads to fewer jobs and less opportunity for everyone, and not state, especially a service driven economy state like Florida can afford the chaos that would ensue.

Work hard and the money will follow.