Nick Lewis: The Blog

I have this very strange -- apparently radical -- belief that the more money typical people have, the better the economy will function as whole. This has contrasted the United States' political leadership's view, which was "Give it all to Trevor McRichy -- he'll see it goes to good use, and he'll give you a great job later..." Frankly, that sounds more like a proposal from a con-artist, than sound government policy.

I don't look to Florida as a role model -- in fact I consider it the United States' canary in the mine. Yet, this study seems to confirm my beliefs. So I blogged about it.

One year after the Florida state minimum wage took effect, there is no evidence to support the dire predictions levied by critics of the measure. Far from having a devastated economy, Florida continues to experience record job growth. Instead of businesses leaving the state, the number of private employers in Florida has grown substantially in the past year, and the state is a national leader in the insourcing of jobs from overseas. Far from workers losing their jobs and being worse off, more of them are working and wages across the state have risen. However, far from wages rising sharply across the pay scale, Florida continues to be a low-wage state, and many workers have a hard time supporting their families on what they earn, even with the new state minimum wage. All available data suggest that the critics of the state minimum wage were wrong about the law’s effects.