Many small businesses object to a higher minimum wage. This commentator presents the real case. Exploitation for profit is wrong.
Her answer to Tiffany Cross hits the nail on the head about minimum wage
Tiffany Cross and the panel discussed red state governors who are withdrawing from federal unemployment insurance this denying their citizens about $300 a week. They want to ensure that they force people back to work for a pittance which is much less than unemployment compensation.
Increasing the minimum wage would get those people working again. But small businesses are always reluctant to support increasing the minimum wage. Dorothy Brown, Tax Processor at Emory University Law School, made a prescient statement.
“You have to think about it if the only way a small business owner can make a profit is by exploiting labor,” Professor Brown said. Then I’m sorry, you shouldn’t be in business because that’s an excuse for why there was enslavement. I can profit if I don’t have to pay my workers anything because I don’t treat them as people. So there has to be a move towards a livable wage. Our minimum wage is an abomination that has to change, and you always get the pushback from small business owners, ‘Oh, I can’t make a profit.’ Maybe you need to get in a different line of work if your only ticket to making a profit is exploiting people. That cannot be the right answer.”
The Professor his the nail on the head.