The Conservative Who Wants to Raise the Minimum Wage

The former publisher of The American Conservative, Ron Unz, is leading an effort to increase the minimum wage in California to $10 in 2015 and then to $12 in 2016. From an article in The New York Times:

Using what he sees as conservative principles to advocate a policy long championed by the left, Mr. Unz argues that significantly raising the minimum wage would help curb government spending on social services, strengthen the economy and make more jobs attractive to American-born workers.

“There are so many very low-wage workers, and we pay for huge social welfare programs for them,” he said in an interview. “This would save something on the order of tens of billions of dollars. Doesn’t it make more sense for employers to pay their workers than the government?”

Stories about employees of companies like McDonalds and Walmart needing foodstamps, Medicaid and food shelf donations to survive have become commonplace.

Unz isn't some namby-pamby RINO. He led the effort to banish bilingual education in California and ran to the right of Gov. Pete Wilson during his challenge for the gubernatorial nomination in 1994.

If your business model requires that you pay your employees so little that they either starve or go on foodstamps, then your company is on the government dole.

Other companies manage to pay the people who do the actual work a living wage. They're still profitable. They just have a slightly smaller margin than the heirs to the Walton family fortune feel is their God-given due.