And they would just hire replacements. They couldn't care less.
And that's the problem.
Now let's say we had a system were everyone was guaranteed a job that paid a living wage. You could do a carveout for teens, I guess, call it a training wage, but the minute he hits 18, you bring him up to the min wage.
I hate to carry on, but let me try to explain this to you:
You can't just raise wages for one group of people. Increasing wages has a domino effect.
A kid gets out of school, finds a job, and starts out at minimum wage. After a year or so, he has been given a few raises and now makes $9:00 an hour. After about three years with the company, he now makes $14.00 an hour.
Then Democrats get in charge and make the federal minimum wage $15.00 an hour. That's fine and dandy, except now that worker is back where he started--at minimum wage.
So he marches to Human Resources and demands that he make at least five bucks an hour more than minimum wage. What choice would they have? They have to pay him.
So now that kid makes $20.00 an hour. Great....... that is until his coworker who has been with the company longer and is making $20.00 an hour finds out about it. Now he marches into HR to demand his huge increase over the high school kid that just got his wages raised to $20.00 an hour. Domino effect
Now inflation takes over because everybody is making so much more money. The problem is that because everybody is making more, cost of living is much more as well, so that minimum wage worker finds himself exactly where he started from before the minimum wage increase.
I have to laugh when I watch one of my favorite shows, the Property Brothers. They usually have episodes in areas like yours, California, and mostly the NE states where inflation is so out of control. Their million dollar homes are something you can buy here for about $400,000. That's because we kept our inflation down by not being so pro-union here. We try to keep our taxes down and wages follow.
Another problems is that we are competing against a world market. When we all make more money, it reduces our ability to compete with foreign markets, and more jobs move overseas.
So what was actually accomplished here?