Minimum wage controversy
LETTERS
Re: Why minimum wages are harmful. Andrew Coyne, Jan. 6, 2018 Andrew Coyne points out the deficiencies facing the sizable increases in the minimum wage rate, in Ontario to $14 in 2018 and $ 15 in 2019. These deficiencies result from the incentives that this action creates. Raising the minimum price of labour incentivizes others who earn above minimum wages to press for similar increases to maintain their wage gap above the new floor. Higher priced labour incentivizes businesses to make do with fewer workers and substitute relatively cheaper mechanized systems, thereby reducing employment.
Coyne is right that the government is clumsily attempting to solve a low income problem with the wrong tool: labour price fixing.
However Coyne’s suggestion for a minimum income for both working and non-working people will incentivize some people to withdraw from the labour force and simply stay at home.
What is wanted instead is a minimum income plan that incentivizes people to work. But we already have one. It’s called the “Refundable Working Income Tax Benefit ( WITB)” program. If, say, a province believes a worker should earn no less than $17,000 a year, and instead the individual earns only $15,000 at $10 an hour, or at any other wage rate, then the net tax refund (or subsidy) under the working income tax benefit would be $2,000.
Similar target minimum working incomes for families could be set without the negative effects of a universal minimum income. The ongoing controversy about Ontario’s minimum wage hike is absolutely nauseating. We’re now in the second decade of the 21st century and we’re still talking about paying people a livable wage? And let’s face it $ 14/$ 15 an hour is not even a livable wage in this country. What a couple of Tim Hortons franchisees have done in curtailing benefits because of the wage increase is so disgusting adjectives don’t apply. I’m so glad that Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne is standing up for low income workers in the province.
If there ever was a winning issue for Ontario’s Liberal government it’s this one. When Canada’s top CEOs make more in one day than most Canadians make in one year and when many marginalized Canadians don’t have access to homeless shelters because there is not enough space in what is one of the coldest winters in recent memory, it kind of makes you wonder about the society we live in. Canada is one of the wealthiest countries in the world and yet we still have issues with paying people basic livable wages? We still have thousands of homeless people living on our very cold streets and the Canadian company that symbolizes family values and hockey moms wants to screw their workers because they don’t believe in paying a fair wage. You know what I say to Tim Hortons, raise the price of a Timbit and pay your workers properly.