Doug Ford wants you to subsidize the poverty wages of corporations

Doug Ford, the new leader of the Conservatives in Ontario, has called the plan to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour in January, 2019 a "tax grab" --which of course it is not.

It is legislation that would force corporations to pay their workers something more approaching a living wage. It is not a tax at all. Rather it makes those who should be paying workers more -- the businesses those workers work for -- do so.

Instead Ford proposes that minimum wage workers should get a tax cut. This tax cut would amount an extra $859 a year for full time minimum wage workers. The higher minimum wage would mean an extra $1,553 a year for that same worker.

So Ford's plan is quite literally a proposal by a rich guy that would take $694 a year out of the pockets of lowest wage workers in the province.

According to the CBC and others, Ford's plan works out even worse for part-time minimum wage workers. 

But more than that, Ford says his plan would cost the government approximately $500 million annually in lost revenue. Revenue that will have to be made up through cuts somewhere.

Which means that ultimately he wants all of us to collectively subsidize the low wages paid by some Ontario businesses -- many of which are huge, and hugely profitable, multinational corporations with multi-millionaire or billionaire CEOs. 

It is very important to keep that in mind. Any plan that frames tax cuts or credits as an alternative to higher wages is by definition asking the people of the province to help ensure that businesses can continue to pay workers wages that they cannot live on. 

While many leftists would absolutely agree that minimum wage workers should not be paying income tax -- taxes instead should be steeply raised on people like Doug Ford -- this can never be seen as a fair alternative to demanding that businesses pay higher minimum wages.

Because it is not one! 

Further Minimum Wage Readings:

"Businesses that pay poverty wages are ultimately socially parasitic in that society as whole ends up subsidizing these wages and the business' profits through a wide array of social programs and benefits that allow minimum wage workers to survive in spite of their pay. It is deeply ironic that the business sector has long depended on government intervention through social spending to maintain what are thereby artificially low wages." - In the case of the Ontario $15 minimum wage the moral imperative is just as great as the economic

Ten myth-busting articles about the minimum wage in Ontario

Have minimum wage increases in Ontario demonstrably driven up inflation? No.

See also: For Ford fact and policy free is the way to go