The Czar finally figured out some stuff about the demand to raise the minimum wage.

The Czar has explained why raising the minimum wage always hurts before, and who’s behind the whole scam, so he won’t go into that again.

But he will do a little bit of math for you so you can understand why the unions have chosen $15 an hour, and not $14.99, or $17.00, or some other amount.

After all, isn’t it strange? Does $15.00 an hour buy you the same amount in San Francisco that it does in Baltimore? Wouldn’t it make more sense to see a so-called living wage reflect the cost of, well, living in different cities? The Czar suspects folks making minimum wage would rather make $15 an hour in Boise, Idaho, where the cost of living is less than, say, Manhattan.

This is, as you suspect, based not on localities, but on a national average. So the Czar wondered, why choose a national average?

Then the Czar wondered why choose any amount for a minimum wage, given that some people work 10 hours a week. After all, the whole point of $15 is that you can theoretically live off that. But can you really live off that working part-time? At what point, hours wise, does $15 an hour clear some economic hurdle no one has mentioned? The Czar wondered where the break-even is.

And then he did the math.

If the minimum wage is based on a national average, so probably is every other number. So the Czar checked in with the Department of Labor on employment averages and found his answers.

1. The average full-time employee works 2,087 hours per year, on average.
2. $15 times 2,087 hours is an annual income of $31,305.
3. Federal tax on that amount is $4,234.50, which leaves you $27,070.50 in change.
4. State taxes vary, but these with Obamacare payouts leaves you with about $26,500 per year.
5. Ready? Union dues, assessed by the SEIU—we demonstrated previously they are behind the measure—equate to 2% of gross pay, or about $6,000 annually.
6. This leaves you about $20,500 per year for yourself.
7. Federal poverty is assessed at $20,000 per year.

Get it? If you join the SEIU and can maintain full-time employment, you can pay your union dues and stay just out of poverty! How convenient.

Some more math.

1. Approximately 1.3 million workers are paid minimum wage, and another 1.7 million are paid less than minimum wage.
2. 35% of minimum-wage employees work full-time.
3. That’s 1,050,000 people who would, in theory, be paid $15 an hour, 40 hours a week.
4. The SEIU and its underlings make $6,000 per employee in dues.
5. $6,000 times 1,050,000 minimum wage earners puts $6.3 billion in the SEIU’s bank account.

Hey, for all those minimum-wage protests bitching about how much CEOs make, they oughta look at how much the SEIU makes off this deal. It’s way more than any CEO.

Still more math: adjusted for inflation, the unions have, since 1968, pushed for a minimum wage that always seems to put union workers just above the poverty line after dues are paid. There’s nothing new about $15 an hour: it was the same percentage since they pushed for $2 an hour in 1968.

Oh. You’re not surprised.

As you may recall, the Czar has an elegant solution that would make everyone happy: eliminate minimum wages entirely.

If you don’t want to work for an employer who pays $6.00 an hour, don’t. Two things would happen to him or her: someone else will take your position, or no one will accept that pay and the employer either raises wages or goes under-staffed.

The Czar understands that it can be difficult to find work right now, and maybe you have to take that $6-an-hour gig. Yes, it is indeed better than nothing. So use your remaining time to get a higher-paying job as quickly as you can.

Look, if the last two paragraphs don’t make sense already, then twenty paragraphs explaining why elimination of minimum wage will force all wages to rise won’t make any sense to you, either. Actually, if you can follow the math in the scam listed above, you’re probably able to earn more than minimum wage, anyway.

Wait, slight math correction: eliminating minimum wage wouldn’t make everybody happy. It would sure annoy the hell out of the SEIU.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.