ANDREW WEARS THE DUNCE CAP AGAIN — LALOR BLASTS STUPID WAGE REGULATIONS

Lalor asks, “Cuomo’s minimum wage tax credits encourage replacing adult employees with teenagers. Does anybody read these laws before they print them?” 

Statement on the Minimum Wage Proposal from Assemblyman Kieran Michael Lalor (R,C,I – Fishkill)

It looks like Governor Cuomo and Speaker Silver have made a mess of it again. Their new minimum wage law would, accidentally I assume, encourage employers to fire adults in favor of hiring teenage students. Employers could get tax credits between $1,560 and $2,808 for every adult employee they replace with a student between 16 and 19 years old. The tax credits continue until 2018.

Does anybody read these laws before they print them? Probably not. The message here is that central planning doesn’t work. The free market does a better job for the economy than any politician or bureaucrat could hope to do. Albany needs to stop meddling with businesses. Leave small businesses alone and they will grow and prosper.

The tax credits even discourage raises for minimum wage workers. An employee has to be paid exactly the minimum wage for the employer to be eligible for the credit. Governor Cuomo and Speaker Silver are actually harming the career prospects for minimum wage workers. It’s hard to believe anyone paid attention while they were writing these laws.

A small business owner knows how to sell a product and create jobs. Albany has no idea how to write decent legislation, let alone create jobs. The governor and the speaker have thoughtlessly written legislation that will cause adults to lose their jobs to teenagers. They need to just get out of the way and let small businesses grow.

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Assemblyman Kieran Michael Lalor, a former teacher at Our Lady of Lourdes in Poughkeepsie, is a Marine Corps veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and founder of the Dutchess County based consulting firm KML Strategies, LLC.  Lalor is the founder of Afghanistan & Iraq Veterans for Congress and a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel. He is a graduate of John Jay High School, Providence College and Pace Law School and lives in Fishkill with his wife Mary Jo and their four young children Katie, Riley, Mikey and Kieran Jr..

  cuomo, lalor, minimum wage regulations