Trump’s Economic Plan: Higher Taxes, Higher Inflation, and Higher Minimum Wage

From FEE.org:

That didn’t take long.

It was only days after Donald Trump clinched the Republican nomination that the mask (such as it was) came off. Suddenly he was telling multiple interviewers that he could be talked into raising taxes, boosting the minimum wage, and printing enough money to pay the national debt in cheap dollars.

"On my plan [taxes are] going down. But by the time it's negotiated, they'll go up," Trump said. “In my opinion, the taxes for the rich will go up somewhat." (After the outcry, he claimed he meant up from his proposed cuts.)

As for the minimum wage, he talks like Obama, completely uninterested in market forces, as if what people are paid is purely at the discretion of political managers: “I think people have to get more… I don't know how you live on $7.25 an hour.”

Oh, but he says he would leave it to the states to decide the height of the wage floor, which raises the question of why he is talking about it at all, since that can presumably happen now. The Department of Labor he would head as president possesses plenty of power to strongly nudge states however it wants. If Trump favors a higher wage floor, he is going to get it.

And, incidentally, such a higher floor could be an crucial part of an anti-immigration policy as well. If low-wage jobs become illegal, immigrants have no reason to cross the border at all. The eugenicists who passed the 1920s immigration laws understood this well.  [read more]

When you increase the minimum wage that hurts entry workers—teenagers. The wage should be negotiated between the employer and employee. Gov’t should keep out of it. Then again if big gov’t thinks the employers are the oppressors then a minimum wage makes sense (so do unions for that matter). I am not saying that employers are perfect but like everyone else they are human. Like teachers, labor union leaders, college professors, etc.

Here’s a question: What if the employee wants to give the job a try? Or wants on-the-job training like an apprenticeship? A minimum wage would prevent this from happening. When a business (especially a small business) hires someone its always taking a risk. Will this person be a hard worker? Show up on time? Will he/she fit into the business climate? That’s why some small family-owned business hire only family members—there is hardly any risk. They know who they are hiring.

FEE.org also has another article called “How Minimum Wages Discourage Entrepreneurship” which explains how the minimage wage law affects business and its employees in other negative ways. And it has an article called “Five Facts about Minimum Wages.”