Regarding the article “Rewriting Foodtopia: Asheville Buncombe Food Policy Council Revisits the City’s Food Action Plan” in the Oct. 18 issue [Xpress]: The proposed solutions to the food insecurity epidemic in our area are all good ones. Making food more available where people live is certainly necessary.
However, it seems to me that the main reason why people are food insecure is that they just do not have enough money, especially since food prices keep increasing. If the food is “available” and they can’t afford to buy it, it won’t help them. If the Asheville City Council really wants to correct the problem, raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour would be the most effective solution. It would also help the housing situation.
Susan A. Stone
Black Mountain
I’m a small business owner in Asheville and would love to pay my employees $15.00 an hour. But the fact is if the minimum wage were raised that high I would have to cut hours or let about half of my employees go to stay in business. I simply cannot afford it. This is exactly what happened in Seattle. Raising the minimum wage that high so quickly actually had a negative effect. Many employees in Seattle requested reduced hours because as a result of their increased pay they were no longer eligible for government benefits.
Benefits lulz. They aren’t government benefits. They are raiding the pockets of taxpayers to further their own selfish lives. The system is broken when people receive higher wages and yet complain it interferes with handouts lulz.
The letter writer concludes: “If the Asheville City Council really wants to correct the problem, raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour would be the most effective solution.”
I’m not expert on matters of NC law, so please, someone with more knowledge add to or correct me on this: But this statement presumes that local governments in NC are empowered to set minimum wages within their jurisdictions. They are not. As creatures of the state, local governments may be permitted or prevented by state law from setting wages.
Although the issue has been in flux along with other provisions in HB2, one of the “hidden,” or less publicized features of that law was to prohibit local governments from raising the minimum wage, and I believe it is unlikely that the GOP controlled state legislature will be inclined to change that any time soon. In short (for better or worse), Asheville does not have the authority to do what is being advocated.
LOL why does it take a government edict to raise wages? Don’t the big mouth socialist and communist live by their beliefs? LOL, of course not.
You want higher wages then simply refuse to work for the one’s you get. But if you assume that allowing every person to simply waltz into the nation unchecked and illegally, don’t for a sec falsely conclude that doesn’t impact pay.
….ZZzzzzzzz
Kudos again Lulz! Also Immigration is a major threat to abortion rights, which will result in even more competition for jobs against unwanted children in about 15 years, in addition to immigrants.
” If the Asheville City Council really wants to correct the problem, raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour would be the most effective solution. It would also help the housing situation.”
Why is someone from Black Mountain fixated on what Asheville City Council does, or does not do? Would not a $15 minimum wage benefit low wage workers in Black Mountain as well?
Not as much as Asheville because Black mountain doesn’t have so many more jobs than homes as Asheville, which is a commuting hub with a big problem with jobsites displacing potential homesites. Black Mountain is not a major commuting hub and so would not benefit so much from job displacement.
No better way to help ‘food insecurity’ than to make sure there are fewer jobs for low-wage workers!
I look forward to the day soon when we pass a law to abolish the poor. That’ll show them for existing.
LOL, under the boot heel of the Marxist, you’ll witness forced labor and taxation but only for those who are deemed unworthy of anything but as criminals FOR the past. And they will be the white working class.
big problem with the liberal elite, who prefer no house to a cheap house and no job to a cheap job; however as long as minimum wages can be confined to commuter hub cities, a huge unintended benefit will be a boon for suburban jobs, enabling suburban workers to walk to work, saving gas and the climate, all by mistake,
City minimum wages would indeed help housing by relocating jobs to the suburbs, thus making more room for houses to be built in the city on the former jobsites, and also reducing commuting costs to new suburban jobsites from cheap exurban housing. It would also save gasoline and the environment by reducing commuting distances from suburban homes to suburban jobs. However it would do nothing for food security except maybe the money saved on gasoline by suburban workers could then be spent on food.