Minimum Job Creation

Our current governor is in a tough reelection campaign, and one of his key causes, at the moment, is raising our state minimum wage. He recently adopted the stunt of living on minimum wage for a week, and has gotten some publicity about the challenges he is finding in keeping himself fed.

'“Had a banana for breakfast, that’s three days in a row. You know, you have to watch your pennies,” Quinn said on Tuesday. “I’m living this week, all seven days, on a minimum wage budget, it’s hard … Yesterday, I went to a place and maybe I would’ve gotten an iced tea, but I got a water. You don’t go in and get a double cheeseburger, I got a junior cheeseburger.”'

A local finance guy says that you can actually eat pretty well if you're just one person on 79 bucks a week. And he worked out one way to do it which sounds quite plausible to me. Anyway, the ending of his blog post really struck me:

'Illinois is the worst state in the Midwest by when it comes to job creation. Every person wants a chance, but often times it’s some government law, regulation, crony, or bureaucrat that is in the way.'

I don't know whether the GOP challenger will be able to do better. A governor can sometimes redo regulations, but on his own he cannot change laws. As far as I can make out, it's expected that our legislature will remain in the hands that currently hold it. The GOP challenger formerly opposed minimum wage laws, but now favors them, perhaps after he took a lot of heat for his prior opposition. In Illinois, you see, most people thinks minimum wage laws are a good thing.

But minimum wage laws can't really be enjoyed
when you're simply unemployed.