Maryland adopts 'living wage': $11.30?

Question

Maryland adopts 'living wage': $11.30
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/News/MarylandAdoptsLivingWage1130.aspx

Now if only the rest of the nation would follow Maryland's lead!

Answer 1

I live in Maryland and this makes no sense. First of all, my understanding is that this applies only to companies that have government contracts. Most people who work for these companies already make more than $11.30/hour. Second benefits can be reduced meaning if you need healthcare insurance or childcare credits, you will pay more for this. This will eat up the increase in wages for most people resulting in no benefit whatsoever. This does not apply for to the private sector and if it did, companies would just the prices for their services and no one would buy them. They would go out of business and then where would all the people who "benefited" from the raise work? You can raise minimum wage to $100, but if McDonald's needs to raise the cost of a hamburger to $50 and gas stations raise the price to $100/gallon to cover their $100/hour employees there would still be working class poor, just with hyper-inflation. The government in Maryland needs to be more concerned about the education system and job training (especially in it's main poverty areas like inner city Baltimore) than creating token programs which will benefit less than 1% of it's residents.

Answer 2

Right, and inflation will follow shortly. Think about it ... if everyone on the low end of the scale gets a significant increase, what will happen to prices of food, clothing, etc.?

Answer 3

TKX 4 Ur invitation.