City Council in Chicago has brushed aside warnings from Walmart stores to approve an ordinance that makes Chicago the biggest city in the nation to require big box retailers to pay a living wage. The ordinance past fourteen yesterday after
three hours of impassion debate. It requires mega retailers to pay wages of at least ten dollars an hour plus UH three dollars in fringe benefits three dollars in fringe benefits by by mid two thousand and ten, it would only apply to companies with more than one billion dollars in annual sales and stores of at least ninety thousand square feet. Alderman Tony Preckwinkle said it's trying to get
the largest companies in America to pay decent wages. No, it's not, then I'm waging in the Lloyd by the way, six and a half. The federal minimum is five dollars in fifteen cents. Mayor Daily and others warned at the living wage proposal would drive jobs and desperately needed development from some of the city's poorest neighborhoods and lead people like Walmart to abandon the city. It's exactly. Walmart will ring the city, Walmart will surround the city, but they
will not go there. This is has nothing to do with a livable wage. This has nothing to do with making big companies pay livable wage. This is all about uh unions. This is all about the Democrats being loyal to unions. I think the Acorn group was behind this, a huge liberal group. It just let me the minimum wage. And it looks like the Republicans are going to propose one of their own increases. So this is all moot. But you know, I'm gonna keep I'm gonna keep talking
about it because it's ridiculous. The minimum wage is an arbitrarily set wage, has nothing to do with market conditions. It actually reduces jobs. It it results in the loss of jobs. People don't believe that, but it is statistically true. Now, let's let me ask you people in Chicago at the at the city council ten bucks an hour in ten why not tomorrow? This is desperately needed, isn't it. Why are you gonna wait almost three years or four why
wait four years? What's the point here? By the time we get to ten dollars an hour is going to be not that much different than the six fifteen or six fifty, That is, they required minimum wage in Chicago. Now, why wait, and by the why stomp at ten? If if ten dollars is a good livable wage, wouldn't fifteen dollars an hour be even better? And if that's true, then why stop at fifteen? Why why didn't you make the livable wage twenty dollars? If big corporations who was
this has said this Tony preck Winkle. So they're trying to get the largest companies in America to pay decent wage. Well, I don't think ten bucks an hours a decent wage, mss preck Winkle, I wouldn't work for it. Who do you think will big companies need to pay their fair share? Fifteen is better? But why stop there? Why didn't you do twenty dollars? And now, and what is this three dollars of French benefits? Three dollars won't even buy a gas and gallon of gas in Chicago, and you call
it a fringe benefit. It's absurd, it's insulting. Make the fringe benefits. In fact, Ms prick Winkle, I have a better idea forget this hourly wage business in the first place. If we're talking about really making these companies come clean and be honest with the people who are making them successful, then let's just say that there is a required minimum salary of seventy five thousand dollars a year for everybody works at Walmart. Everybody gets healthcare, dental, no co pay,
no deductible, and twenty dollars fringe benefits every year. Well, we can't do that. Why not? White? If you can go from six fifty to ten, why can't you go from ten to fifteen? And if you can go to fifty, why can't you go to twenty? I mean, go talk to your union buddies are doing whatever jobs they're doing, and ask them if they would go back to ten dollars an hour on the basis it's a livable wage.
Do you think louis down there in a stonemason, the bricklayers or whatever it's gonna tell you that he looks have ten dollars an hour and on the basis is livable wage. Don't you think that Walmart Automa at least have to pay the lowest union contract equivalent in Chicago? Where do you come up with these arbitrary numbers ten bucks chump change, fifteen chump change. Why the average illegal
immigrant wouldn't work for that. You're gonna have to do better than that, Chicago, if you're gonna really talk about a living wage. But I don't know how you stop at ten. I don't know how you stop at twenty. And I don't know why you don't just go and make it official. Make it a hundred grand, miss preck Winkle, make it one hundred grand. Talk about a livable wage. Somebody might really be able to buy a car and not have to take Chicago public transit at a hundred grand.
I have to teach them English, but well, no, you don't even have to do that. And make Walmart pay for that if they want to learn English. Go all the way with this Chicago City Council. You are just tiptoeing around here. You're dancing around the real truth. You don't care about these workers. You just want a double digit minimum wage because you know what this does. Can I tell you what the big secret of the minimum
wages folks? Now, the so called livable wage. In addition to whatever political ploy it is to try to teach the downtrodden the forgotten the hungry and the thirsty that the Democrats care about them. What it really is is a way to goose union wages up because good old union negotiators in Chicago, A're not gonna say WHOA people that don't know how to count beyond ten and they've only been in a country for a couple of years are gonna make ten bucks an hour at a box store,
at a checkout line or somewhere stocking things on shelves. Well, good for them. We want to raise our union contract next time it comes up. The higher the minimum wage goes, the higher the baseline for union contracts are. This is such a scam. And of course, since the city of Chicago and it's union deals that it makes with the city with other people is actually paid by Chicago taxpayers, people like Tony Preckwinkle don't really have to think of the money coming out of her purse or pocketbook or
that pocket whichever she prefers. Al in in Chicago. Welcome, So nice to have you on the program. Nice to talk to you than at Moscow on Michigan. Uh. This is nothing more than a political act. It's also an act that will to impact greatly on the poorest of the people in Chicago. If you know Chicago, there's a ring of poverty around that very successful core downtown. Those folks rely on public transportation, they won't be able to benefit from the targets and the Walmarts and the discounts
that are available. You know, Ben Stein, the economist has many times said that Walmart is the greatest poverty anti poverty program going. But this is also a political act. You know, they'll they'll cancel this out if they begin to see stores growing and being built right across the line in suburban communities. And that is what will happen, because it happened with gas stations, gas stations rim the city. Well,
it's already started. Walmart's already said, are going to build a store in one of these economically depressed places, and the people live there love it. That's actually, that's an excellent point, an excellent point. If these stores get built outside the and you said it not I the ring of poverty uh in in Chicago, then the primary beneficiaries of a Walmart store won't be able to get there to take or they'll go broke getting there and won't be able to spend any money. Once they do get
there absolutely. Can I tell you Kmart's home depot lows they're building right now in Evergreen Park. And these are communities that are one block. You know, they share a border with the city of Chicago. And they do it because also sales tax in Chicago, if you cross the street, you go into Indiana, you go from eight eight and a half percent down to six in Chicago is hurting itself.
But Chicago has always done this. It's not unique. What I call a captive constituency, that's the captive but that's that's not I mean that that's true in the sales tax. I mean uh, in in New Jersey they bumped up the sales tax on some luxury cars and boats once and people just went to Pennsylvania. Uh then and they ended up having to resend the tax. Because liberals raising taxes raises revenue. They do not understand the dynamic aspects of raising or cutting and lowering taxes. But I'm gonna
I'm gonna tell you something here. This is uh. I want to ask you about the mayor because you're obviously in Chicago, you're closer to it now. And the other day, this wackle bunch of City Council people actually passed a trans fat ordnance or they're working on it, and and and and and Mayor Daily said, what the hell are we doing? We got serious problems with kids in this country. They've got a drug problem, got a crime for. What the hell are we regulating people's menus for? And he
opposes this living wage thing? Now, what's with that? The City Council of Chicago has nothing better to do? No, I mean, what's no, no, no, what's with Daily opposing that? Daily's a Democrat to Daily sounding like a Republican, almost a conservative Republican on this. Yeah, but Daily's you know, Daily is not running for anything at the moment. U He's, well, he will be soon, but he's yeah, he's doing a straddle.
He you know, he's doing what Clinton always does. He wants to be on the right side of the issue. It's it's not a matter of principle, it's a matter of positioning. And that's how Daily always opened in a second, the living wage, minimum wage. That's a fundamental, defining issue of the Democratic Party. And he's ripping people like Tony PreK Winkle. By the way, how long has Tony PreK Winckle been a member of the City Council in Chicago.
I think forever. Is she married? You know, I don't know, I can't, can't just wondering if it's a maiden name. I'm sorry, I'm just wondering. If it's her maiden name, I could google it. You don't have to worry about it. I'll handle it. Uh anyway, Thanks, Thanks, Al, I appreciate, appreciate the input. This, this is this is just fascinating stuff. But it is big cities, big democrats. Cities are locked back in an old era drive by media, locked in
an old era. There are major transformational changes happening in front of all of them, the Middle East, in this country, and they're so locked in that old lens and a prism through which they look at news that they're missing all of it. You know, here, here's something else. For the Chicago City Council and for everybody else here. That toying around. It is lunacy, and it is sheer lunacy
of raising the minimum wage. And I can demonstrate it to anybody who thinks they want to call and argue with me about it, because I know how you're gonna are. You're gonna the race who can live on five dollars it can live? Well, Uh, a lot of people are not living on it. As the point, it's an entry level wage. It's many of them are the equivalent of babysitters. There are entry level jobs in America, the newest one
being the illegal immigrant job. And then there are other jobs that you just your first job in the marketplace. There is a myth out there that heads of households supporting the uh family Sadan and a two point eight kids in a white picket fence in suburbia on five dollars an hour or five fifty and six fifty, whatever the hell it is, is a myth. Head of households are not earning. I mean, there may be some, but it's you're you're gonna react to this totally emotionally. They're
not nothing. You hear it. I know, well, how many of you think what you're earning right now is enough? I bet you're all saying, no, I need more. Even I say that, even I said, now, what are we doing about it? Are we running around? He needs a government program to raise my wage. There's a minimum wage. You know something else that's not talked about with the minimum wage, that tax burden. Why isn't the tax burden
which cuts the net minimum wage ever discussed? If the minimum wage is so crucial, shouldn't it be free of any taxation? Like Mrs ms prick Winkle in Chicago the ten dollar living wage, Make it tax free. I know that they're not gonna be fun income tax out of that, but they are gonna pay state. They're gonna pay through the nose on state income to X. They're gonna have Social Security, Medicare taxes withheld, and a whole bunch of
other things unemployment insurance, workers compensation. Now, I mean, how is that fair? You? You people in government talk about how unfair it is that there's minimum wage is so low, and then whatever the minimum wage is gets eaten up by your taxes. So if you really believe all this, those of you at the Chicago City Council or any other you pro minimum wage geeks, if you actually believe this, then make the next time you propose it all the
way through no taxes. Every minimum wage recipient is exempted from taxes. It's too important. People need to live, Mr Limbaugh. They need to be able to eat and feed their family. I understand that, and I wouldn't want to do it on five dollars an hour. I wouldn't want to do it on ten, although I've done it on the equivalent we all have as the point, well other than you trust funders and you Walster people. His first job out out of Harvard, your hedge fund as a couple hundred
grand a year. But most people have earned the equivalent of I did when I was thirteen. I got it out of the way when I was sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen. That's when I earned. The equipment was a bucket a quarter an hour, and I didn't even care. It was so little. It didn't care. I just I just love the experience. I gave the money to my dad because I he had fronted me the money to go to broadcast school. It's not a broadcast schools, electronic school went
down to Dallas when I was sixteen. Had to have a radio license. That's the irrelevant now, but I had had one then in order to work at this radio station in my hometown, and he required me to be a cost six hundred bucks to fly me down there, living some old woman's house for the six weeks. Well that then they had a whole row of houses down there next to the school, and they the owners of the houses, rented out rooms for very cheap. It was a school, it was a factory. All kinds of guys
going through their women too. And I was sixteen when I did it. And when I got back and started work and gave my dad the money paying back, and unbeknownst to me, he set up a bank account. Uh, and that just all that money. After after three years, it was like three thousand dollars. So I made a thousand dollars a year and I was working full time. Now I was a teenager. But that's what the minimum
wage is. It's exactly what it is. It is misrepresented as something that a majority of Democrats, a majority of Democrats want you to believe, a majority of Americans are just one paycheck away from homelessness, destitution, And it's all Bush's fault, the Republicans fault because they won't raise the
minimum wage and so forth. I'm just saying, if you're gonna go out there and raise the minimum wage as city council member, a member Congress, whoever, whatever governmental body you're part of, be fair, go all the way exempt all taxes. I mean, okay, ten dollar livable wage, three dollar fringe benefit. That's true, really cute. That's three dollar fringe benefit. That's just so thoughtful and compassionate. I wouldn't have thought of that myself. That shows how much smarter
the liberals are than I am. But after the taxes, the state taxes, the medicare, if there is federal income tax, ten dollars an hour, probably gonna pay any uh, most taxes paid. But the rich uh in this country. Um, but Medicare, Medicaid, social Security, one armed amputees, Grantwich Village of fund. Whatever is taken out of the ten bucks is going to add up to about five or six an hour? Now is that really compassionate? I don't think so.