Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s plan to raise Chicago’s minimum wage to $15-an-hour by 2021, but maintain a “sub-minimum wage” for tipped workers, cleared a key legislative hurdle on Monday to cheers from restaurant owners.
That’s not good enough to satisfy Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th). He argued again Monday that eliminating the “sub-minimum wage” and phasing in a $15-an-hour wage for all workers was imperative to “reduce workplace sexual harassment” and eradicate a two-tiered system that “leaves black and Latino women in the service industry behind.”
If you’re frustrated with Illinois’ educational results, you may want to follow the money from teachers unions. In the last four years alone, Illinois lawmakers and political candidates have taken nearly $30 million in contributions from teachers unions and their national affiliates.
Lawmakers conveniently ignore the full impact of inflation when it comes to ordinary Illinoisans. Take the personal exemption on the state income tax. For tax year 2023, the exemption will not rise with inflation as it should under current law. And that means a higher tax bill for everyone.
Wirepoints President Ted Dabrowski testified on April 10, 2024 to members of the House Revenue and Finance Committee at the invitation of Rep. Joe Sosnowski. Ted told lawmakers that the state’s property tax burden has become dire for countless Illinoisans.
Ted joined WLS 890’s PM Chicago Show to discuss Chicago’s worsening pension crisis, why the city’s crisis makes it such an outlier nationally, its negative impact on residents, government workers and retirees alike, and what Mayor Brandon Johnson should do about it.
When has any company persisted with a project in the face of stronger local, statewide and national opposition? When have taxpayers subsidized a more harebrained project?
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Raise the cost of something and less of it will be demanded in a market.
Anyone who thinks raising the minimum wage to $15 won’t reduce low-skilled employment (jobs) should try to explain why they stop at $15. Why not $30? Or $60/hr? What’s the magic number? All this is doing is pushing more and more labor to robotics.