Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute highlights two new analyses of the incoming president’s plans. The first addresses labor unions.
Joe Biden is old. He has been in politics since 1970 and holds antiquated views. On the campaign trail, he used expressions such as “malarkey” and said that kids should listen to the “record player.”
President Biden’s views on labor unions are similarly archaic. Unions appear to be central to his view of the economy, yet few private-sector workers are in unions today. This Biden campaign statement, which is ostensibly about clean energy, promotes labor unions 32 times. Biden wants to “create millions of good, union jobs rebuilding America’s crumbling infrastructure,” wants to “ensure these investments create good, union jobs that expand the middle class,” and so on. Spending on cars, energy, manufacturing, railroads, airports, broadband, and everything else in Biden’s plan is about union jobs, over and over ad nauseam.
The focus is pathological. I say that because union members account for just 6 percent of private-sector employment today, yet Biden’s statement reads as if unions dominate the workforce, are the bulwark of the middle class, and are central to the economy. They are not and will not be going forward.
Edwards’ second post tackles Biden’s proposed increase in the government-mandated minimum wage.
As part of his $1.9 trillion relief plan, President Joe Biden proposes to double the federal minimum wage from $7.25 per hour to $15 per hour.
If enacted, the higher mandated wage would eliminate jobs for younger and less-skilled workers. In 2019, 58 percent of minimum wage workers were age 24 or younger. Biden’s website says that he wants to create jobs for young people to “reach full employment as fast as possible,” but his minimum wage plan would do the opposite. Young people need entry-level jobs to start climbing the career ladder but raising the minimum wage would break the bottom steps.
A minimum wage increase would also damage labor-intensive small businesses.
