Brooklyn, New York – The Conservative Party of New York State issued an additional memo to the Members of the NYS Legislature stressing the fact that raising the minimum wage will harm the economy of New York by reducing job growth. The memo follows:

Governor Cuomo has repeatedly stated that he wants New York to serve as a nationwide model for progressive policies all the while denying facts that prove progressive policies fail to produce the utopia progressives demand. We did not achieve Empire State status by being an experimental laboratory for liberal tinkering. We lost our Empire State status when New York chipped away at the free-market standards that established New York as a financial magnet only to become a struggling state at the precipice, ranked second-to-last for the worst business climate in the nation.

In a Wall Street Journal article published December 15, 2015, the WSJ acknowledges the various articles by economists over the past 100 years that both sides tend to rely on. It concludes that “the vast majority of these studies point to job losses for the least-skilled. They are based on fundamental economic reasoning—that when you raise the price of something, in this case labor, less of it will be demanded, or in this case hired.”

The WSJ goes on to say that “among the many studies supporting this conclusion is one completed earlier this year by Texas A&M’s Jonathan Meer and MIT’s Jeremy West, which reaffirmed that ‘the minimum wage reduces job growth over a period of several years’ and that ‘industries that tend to have a higher concentration of low-wage jobs show more deleterious effects on job growth from higher minimum wages.’

Clearly an indication of New York’s economic decline as its minimum wage increased through the years.

The leading progressive voice in the current presidential race, Sen. Bernie Sanders, calls for Americans to embrace the Scandinavian economic model. We question if he realizes that Sweden, Denmark and Finland do not have a minimum wage and that countries that do not have a minimum wage have on average unemployment rate four percent lower than those with a minimum wage. Denmark has long been held as the model for progressives – they have the world’s lowest level of income inequality – remember no mandated minimum wage – due to the powerful collective bargaining system gaining a $20 wage for fast food workers. However, fast food restaurants, and related industries, are less profitable. Furthermore, the economic future of Denmark is rapidly declining.

Forbes’ notes, “You can’t suspend the laws of economics. You can’t expand a welfare safety net to cover an entire society.”

The Conservative Party unequivocally states that you cannot increase the minimum wage in New York State without facing the consequence of losing jobs.

When did putting people out of work become the role of legislators? Tell Governor Cuomo NO to a $15 minimum wage. Your role, as a New York Legislator, is to help New Yorkers, not put them out of work.

LM 2016-02