Minimum Wage Hurts Beginners — Transcript

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1. 0:00The city of Seattle made history on Monday when it
2. 0:01raised the minimum wage.
3. 0:03The highest in the nation by far.
4. 0:05Five years ago, Seattle became the first city
5. 0:08to pass a $15 minimum wage.
6. 0:10I think it's pretty awesome since I benefit from it.
7. 0:13A rising tide raises all boats?
8. 0:1515 in Seattle is just a beginning,
9. 0:17We have an entire world to win. Solidarity.
10. 0:21[Crowd cheering]
11. 0:23When the law passed,
12. 0:24we went to Seattle to interview people about it.
13. 0:27It's a good thing that we are leading the
14. 0:29way for the rest of the country.
15. 0:30I wish that it was all over the place, not just Seattle.
16. 0:34Increasingly, it is!
17. 0:36New York State taking steps towards
18. 0:38a $15 and hour minimum wage.
19. 0:41Other states and lots of cities have copied Seattle.
20. 0:44California governor Jerry Brown signed
21. 0:46a $15 minimum wage bill.
22. 0:48But now the results from Seattle are in.
23. 0:50Some people are being paid more.
24. 0:52They are the winners.
25. 0:54But for many people who wanted jobs…
26. 0:56The increased minimum wage is
27. 0:58having an opposite effect.
28. 0:59costing thousands of jobs and
29. 1:01actually hurting low income workers.
30. 1:04You see it on this graph.
31. 1:05The green line tracks the number of new jobs
32. 1:08created in Washington State.
33. 1:10The red line is new jobs in Seattle.
34. 1:13Once Seattle raised its minimum wage to $15,
35. 1:17entry-level job growth stalled.
36. 1:19It’s really presented by minimum wage advocates
37. 1:22as a win-win.
38. 1:23It's a win-win for employers. It's a win-win for workers.
39. 1:27And, there are no negatives.
40. 1:29But there are negatives, says Erin Shannon
41. 1:31of the Washington Policy Center.
42. 1:33She points to stores like this one
43. 1:35where the owner used to hire kids and train them,
44. 1:38but once Seattle raised the minimum,
45. 1:41she stopped hiring beginners.
46. 1:42[cash register]
47. 1:44The politicians, in Seattle especially,
48. 1:46have no sense whatsoever about what it
49. 1:49means to small businesses like us.
50. 1:52Most people we interviewed said
51. 1:53the politicians are right.
52. 1:55Yes, some people will go out of business.
53. 1:56Others will take their place.
54. 1:58It's something we need to do.
55. 1:59It’s as if they’ve never learned about
56. 2:01supply and demand.
57. 2:03Minimum wage actually hurts my chances
58. 2:05of getting employed.
59. 2:06This 20-year-old understands the effect better
60. 2:09than Seattle’s politicians did.
61. 2:11Raising the minimum wage causes
62. 2:13increased unemployment.
63. 2:15Rigel Nobel-Kosa is one of the $1500 winners
64. 2:18of a video contest done by my Classroom charity.
65. 2:22My name is Dillon Hodes and this is my WAGE RAGE.
66. 2:26Dillon Hodes won the high-school video contest.
67. 2:29He mentioned a friend who worked at Kroger
68. 2:31until her store raised its minimum to 12 dollars
69. 2:35She was getting paid $12 an hour,
70. 2:36but slowly but surely,
71. 2:38they started cutting her days, her hours.
72. 2:41She was regulated to only working on Sundays.
73. 2:44And that's because she was young and inexperienced.
74. 2:46I feel the big thing-
75. 2:48She wasn't worth $12.
76. 2:49She wasn't worth $12 to Kroger.
77. 2:50She's worth the world to me,
78. 2:51but she wasn't worth $12 to Kroger.
79. 2:54I learned things from their videos,
80. 2:56like how many wealthy countries
81. 2:57have no minImum wage
82. 2:59Countries such as Iceland, Norway, Sweden
83. 3:02and Switzerland.
84. 3:03Nobody knows that.
85. 3:04No, no, and especially with Switzerland,
86. 3:06Which has much lower unemployment than America,
87. 3:09partly because Switzerland has no minimum.
88. 3:13It stops us from actually getting a job
89. 3:15Esther Rhodes won the high school essay contest.
90. 3:17Her essay pointed out that America’s first
91. 3:21minimum wage laws were racist.
92. 3:22At the time-- blacks were often paid less,
93. 3:25but they were more likely to be employed than whites.
94. 3:29The whites were like,
95. 3:30"Hey, they're getting all the jobs. This isn't fair."
96. 3:32Congressman Allgood said he hoped
97. 3:34the min wage would stop:
98. 3:35“cheap colored labor in competition with white labor.”
99. 3:39So although Americans think the minimum
100. 3:42was invented to help needy people
101. 3:44It was meant for the opposite,
102. 3:45to keep the poor and the minorities from getting jobs.
103. 3:48And today it still keeps
104. 3:50entry-level workers from finding work.
105. 3:52But the politicians don’t understand the downside.
106. 3:55Lift up the minimum wage to at least $15 an hour
107. 3:58Raising the minimum wage to 15 bucks an hour
108. 4:01[cheering]
109. 4:03It’s easy to see why a higher minimum wage
110. 4:05is so popular.
111. 4:07On the surface, you think oh, this is a great idea
112. 4:09Because it raises some people’s wages.
113. 4:12Everybody deserves a living wage
114. 4:15But while it helps some, it harms many others.
115. 4:17Especially young people,
116. 4:19who now may not be offered their first job.
117. 4:22I'm 14, it'd be very difficult for me to find a job,
118. 4:25my labor wouldn't be worth $15 an hour.
119. 4:27If only politicians were as smart as those kids.