OPINION:
As if inflation weren’t pressuring businesses enough, Virginia gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger promises to sign a minimum wage bill as soon as she’s elected. Good for everybody, right? What could possibly go wrong?
Well, businesses have choices. Increased labor costs make the expense of automation a cost-saving move or they can outsource where labor is cheaper rather than manufacture in-house (in China, for example). They can hire more part-time workers to avoid the heavier costs of full-time wage earners. They can move their business to more business-friendly states. Each of these options eliminates operating costs to make up for higher labor costs. Yes, those workers lucky enough to have a job will get higher wages, but there will be fewer jobs.
The worst effect will be the elimination of entry-level jobs for young people entering the job market — because the Spanberger effect will make the price of their labor more than it is worth to an employer. It would eliminate entry-level bottom rungs on the traditional career ladder, particularly for young minority men and women who have already been penalized by a public school system that failed to prepare many of them with marketable skills.
Yes, the intention of a higher minimum wage is to make things better for working people, but the Spanberger effect is throwing money at social problems without fully understanding the consequences. That invariably makes social problems worse, particularly for minorities.
NORTON RUBENSTEIN
Richmond, Virginia
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