Democrat
state Rep. Malinda
White sinned multiply against her liberal allies. She joined a veto-proof majority
with initial House
approval during the regular session of SB 418, then abstained on
the version that drew the veto
of Democrat Gov. John
Bel Edwards. Then, in the special session she voted with a larger
veto-proof bunch for the stronger HB 57 and
with an even
larger majority to send it to Edwards, who has said he will sign it.
That uppity
behavior won’t go unnoticed by party powerbrokers, who remain indebted to the
trial lawyer lobby and hope to see donations from it fall as little as possible
given personal injury lawyers’ smaller profit margins and their annoyance at
Democrats’ inability to curtail the transfer of wealth from vehicle insurance
ratepayers to their pockets. So, White devised a way to compensate for her apostasy.
Asked
about the impact of tort reform, White argued that – get this – insurance
rates would come down if the minimum wage were raised. Apparently, with higher
wages more people who don’t pay car insurance will buy it, presumably driving
down overall rates as the risk spreads out. This defense of the left’s crusade
of hiking the minimum wage balances out her votes that will have the impact of
lowering rates but also trial lawyer incomes.
Yet to believe
this economic causation one must know next to nothing about characteristics
of minimum wage earners nor basic economics. The majority of such employees
live in a multiple earner household and are young; in fact, a lot probably are
on somebody else’s policy. Few probably even solely own a vehicle of which they
are the sole insured.
As the wage rises
from there, you are likely to find more single adult earners and with children
who do own vehicles, which would appear to fall into the group White alleges that
don’t buy insurance because they don’t make enough dough. Of course, raise the
minimum wage and they may not have jobs, as continually confirmed by research. Congressional analysis of the
most recent effort by Democrats to raise the minimum wage by 2026 to $15 or
almost doubling it shows it by then would destroy 1.2 million jobs, pull an
extra 1.1 million people in poverty, and cost families $8 billion in income. If,
as White claims, underpaid people can’t afford insurance, she should see how
many jobless ones can.
In short, raising
the minimum wage likely would spawn more uninsured motorists and create upwards
pressure on rates. White, who runs her own business (and, no doubt in order not
to be called a hypocrite, surely pays all her employees at least double the
minimum wage), either knows better and is just playing politics, or truly has
no clue about economics and has stayed in business through blind luck.
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