First of all, I have to stop watching CNN leftist propaganda early in the morning. (I actually multi-task most of the time; I 'll usually be working in the morning or blogging in the evening, just like people might listen to music on the job. CNN had this graphic, for instance, pointing out Republicans oppose Biden's $1.9 T while "polls" suggest 70% of Americans support it. These polls are so phony. Context is everything. Suppose I point out to poll takers that the US is paying hundreds of billions of dollars each year in interest to service a $28T national debt: Taxpayer money is going to China and other foreign countries loaning their money to the Treasury, not to mention rich people. What if I tell you historically nations which spend money they don't have pay a price in terms of inflation, an implicit tax which disparately affects lower-income people? The whole illusion here is the duped poll participants are voting for a free lunch. Santa Claus is very popular--until January's credit card bills hit your mailbox or email inbox.
I disagree with almost every aspect of the Biden spending proposal, except for maybe COVID-19 testing and vaccines (and I sill think the free market could do that faster, better, and cheaper). I know I would be willing to pay a fair price for a vaccine versus a "free" vaccine, where the supply is being controlled by an incompetent, unresponsive government bureaucracy. The fact is the 3 vaccines could have been released weeks before they were, and how many more people lost their lives needlessly?
A lot of the bill is on usual Democrat spending priorities as usual; we've this this pattern time after time. A large pot of the bill is going for local/state bailouts. I heard a good Cato Institute podcast on this while working today by Chris Edwards (see here for his written comments).. While there are some exceptions, most cities/states overall hit their overall revenue goals, with only some adverse effects, e.g., softer sales tax collections. Lincicome provides a more comprehensive view of Biden's $1.9T folly here.
The minimum wage is a mandate, not a government-funded program like an earned income credit. Now there is no doubt that Draconian local pandemic business restriction have had a disparate effect on lower income workers, like restaurant workers, but increasing wage costs on struggling businesses doesn't assure lower-income people will make more money; employers may respond by cutting jobs and/or hours. A large plurality of minimum-wage worker (at last check, maybe less than 5% of overall workers) are household dependents, e.g., spouses or children, and job experience is a fungible benefit which typically results in higher-paying employment in the long term.
When I have faced recessions, I could offer to work for less money. Let me give an actual example from my prior career as an MIS professor. Providence College offered me a campus visit (an expenses-paid academic job interview where you usually make a research presentation). They told me going into the interview the maximum the job would pay was $35K. (I was paid in the 40's during my prior 5 years at state universities.) [I have at least 2 cousins who earned their degrees at Providence College.] I still didn't get the offer. But the point is, I was willing to make my candidacy more appealing to accommodate their budgets. [On a side note, I, as a Catholic, earned my bachelor's at OLLU, a Catholic college. I went on 2 other campus visits to Catholic colleges and also negotiated with a fourth, which waived a campus visit. Not one offer from any of them. Not sure why, although I suspect ISU blackballed me with the last (the chair mentioned she had met married ISU professors I knew during my year as a visiting professor at a conference).]
If you are struggling to find a job paying $7.25/hour, you sure the hell won't find one paying $15/hour. You face more competitors willing to work for more money. As I mentioned in an earlier tweet to an economically illiterate "progressive" troll, if Amazon decided to double its prices for TVs overnight, I am not likely to buy a TV. This is Economics 101. Maybe Big Labor wants to protect its members from competition in the market; it's certainly not in the interest of lower-paid workers. A minimum wage law is fundamentally immoral. This is not to say we oppose the concept of higher wages, just the method of getting there. We think the free market provides the best way of getting there. One of my favorite economists and bloggers explains below debunks the $15/hour argument.
