Chairman Michael R. Long sent the following legislative memo opposing Governor Cuomo’s call to increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour. The memo follows:

The NYS Conservative Party would be ecstatic if every citizen in New York State earned enough wages to be considered a one-percenter or at least a six-figure salary. That is the American Dream…a dream that will be shattered if government insists on mandating a raise in the minimum wage to $15.

Most earners of the minimum wage are those entering the work force with little experience and unskilled workers hoping to climb out of poverty. According to the AFL-CIO website, the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act established a federal minimum wage to serve as “a floor below wages,” to reduce poverty and to ensure that economic growth is shared across the workforce.

The original concept for a minimum wage changed dramatically when Micah White, PhD wrote in Adbusters.com – Anarchic Swarms – The Emerging Model, an article calling for a worldwide, multi-front mutiny against the way our economic and military leaders are running the world, giving birth to the radical movement, Occupy Wall Street that has morphed into today’s demands for a “fair and just” $15 an hour minimum wage.

Social media helped organize a scrappy group of anarchists and made them the driving force demanding an increase that most economists say will hurt the people it supposedly seeks to help.

 The Cato Institute lays out four reasons not to increase the minimum wage here.

 Slate.Com writes that Raising the Minimum Wage to $15 Would Hurt Millions of Vulnerable People.

 American Action Forum writes that government — despite many in government saying it will save taxpayers — savings are minimal compared to the labor market consequences.

 Noted author, John C. Goodman, opines on Why Raising the Minimum Wage is a Bad Idea.

The American Dream has and will always be a beacon to free-market entrepreneurs’ creating businesses and giving people jobs. Micah White, PhD proved his social experiment worked – he has changed the way government looks at the minimum wage, albeit a misconstrued goal based on the public’s approval for increased wages.

Raising the minimum wage, to the extent being called for, may give birth to an American nightmare, where there are no jobs available to escape poverty.

We urge New York State Legislators to reject what has become a populist call for a $15 minimum wage.

LM 2016-01