Believe it or not, if the minimum wage in my area goes up (i pay all my workers well over minimum wage) i will close up shop.
I wont be able to afford to give them a 7.75 cent wage each and if the unskilled labor force gets a raise, my skilled workers deserve the same raise. If i didn't give them that raise i would be taking advantage of them. My rates would have to go up ALOT. I currently charge about 100 bucks a room for painting. That would be about 150 if i gave my guys the same raise as the proposed min wage increase. But while that doesn't sound to bad imagine this... A standard 8x8 deck (ive built dozens of them) normally goes for about 4,000 bucks. 1,500 of that is labor, 1,500 for materials, and the other thousand is mine (after insur bhai m y s ance, cost of equipment, and so on).... This raise would put my labor at about 2250. My employees often work overtime... Im scared to do that math and see how much it will cost. I can't just raise the price of jobs that end up scheduled for when my employees hit overtime, so i have to raise that price for all jobs.
That means that it will now cost about 5,000 instead of 4,000 to build the same deck.
The employers that avoid allowing overtime, and dont give their SKILLED workers the wages they deserve will not have to raise their prices as much, and i will no longer have nearly as much business.
Also... Obamacare is not one of my favorite new laws.... But its not THAT bad. I did lose my insurance at the time, and my doctor. It screwed alot of people but it helped just as many... Idk... Slavery didn't help anyone but "mastuh"