are you in manufacturing? and it has led increases in manufacturing. right here in river city. there's been a number of cut and sew and manufacturing factories sprout and some old ones hanging on in cental/eastern missouri and southern illinois. raise minimum wage to $15, on top of payroll raxes, worker's comp, etc. they will go overseas. it's already being explored. pakistan is a big outlet. atlas 46. schutt. tag. demoulin. on and on. these will be jobs lost. i know it as a fact. some of these have already started outsourcing some work to mexico.Eh — we’ve seen this movie before. Corp America threatened to move
manufacturing overseas unless we neutered unions. We did that and they moved anyway. They complained about taxes so we cut Corp tax rate and threw TIFs at them like candy and they still set up in tax havens and moved manufacturing overseas. Now they are extorting us over a (not really) livable wage. Lol. The federal minimum wages has been $7.25 since 2006? Weird that hasn’t led to a boom in manufacturing.
the reason there isn't more manufacturing is because of exactly what i wrote. min wage; payroll taxes; worker's comp. it's no coincidence nike and the rest produce abroad. under armour still makes stuff here. for years the sec uniforms sponsored by under armour were being made in licking missouri. people who don't own businesses have no clue what raising minimum wages do to folks who count on these jobs. many in places that if the company leaves no one will come in to replace those jobs. tax abatements only go so far in attracting manufacturing. what's more with the pandemic owners are getting more and more worried. manufacturing abroad is easy. they all speak english. use dhl express so product turnaround is only another few days. etc. I’m always amazed at how people just assume that let’s just change the law and make companies pay 40 percent more is 1) tenable on the part of a company and 2) a company already running on tight margins trying to be made in America will put up with that and stay. And by stay I don’t mean the co leaves. The co stats in the states it just outsources all of its work out of country.
and i get minimum wage is impossible to live on alone. but i'm not sure raising it is the answer. training and education so that one doesn't have to work for minimum wage is a better approach in my view.
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