The 2014 Ohio minimum wage beginning this past January went from $7.85 to $7.95 a bit more than the Federal national wage of $7.25, and now the small business community supports a higher minimum wage that some experts believe is good for the economy. For more news about this and other topics follow the links below.
Why we still don’t know how many small businesses signed up through Obamacare
And why it’s probably not very many.
In contrast to the widely publicized enrollment numbers on the health care law’s individual marketplace, there’s apparently no way to know how many business owners and employees have signed up through the law’s new small-business exchanges.
By all indications, though, it’s not very many.
One House Republican has twice asked federal health officials to provide data on how many owners and employees have enrolled in and paid for plans through the law’s new insurance marketplaces for small businesses. Since the launch last fall, the employer portals, known as SHOP exchanges, have suffered even more technical problems and delays than the exchange for individuals and families.
“The SHOPs opened, although without online enrollment and many promised features, on October 1, 2013,” Rep. Sam Graves (Mo.), chair of the House Small Business Committee, wrote in his latest letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees the exchanges. “Over seven months later, we still do not have any federal and some state SHOP enrollment data.”
A Higher Minimum Wage Is Good for Business
Small business owners realize the benefits of higher pay and a stronger consumer class.
Five years ago this month, the minimum wage reached the lofty sum of $7.25 per hour, the last step in a series of increases Congress set in motion in 2007. It hasn’t been raised since, and after taking inflation into account, the minimum has fallen to an adjusted level of only $6.54. That may change soon. Support for a higher minimum wage now comes from an unlikely source: the owners of America’s small businesses, and CEOs of some the nation’s largest and most respected brands. Meanwhile, recently published research shows that wage hikes at a modest level don’t kill growth and jobs. In fact, the states that have raised their minimums have enjoyed above-average economic growth.
Last week the American Sustainable Business Council and Business for a Fair Minimum Wage released a report of a scientific national poll of small business owners. The poll involved a live telephone survey of 555 small business owners, with between 2 and 99 employees each. Respondents spanned the political spectrum, all regions of the country and a broad cross-section of industries.
Net neutrality important to small businesses, customers
Let me offer the following small-business parable:
Lou owns a small business, a pizzeria, in a city with only one highway.
Everyone must use this one highway to get to work, go shopping, see a movie and connect with friends. It’s a critical infrastructure for the whole community.
Lou uses the highway for home delivery of his pizzas and to get supplies for his restaurant.
Until now, everyone in the city could use the highway equally. But the on-ramps to the highway are privately owned.
Even though the highway was built with government money, one day the on-ramp owners decided to create a fast lane. Now you have to pay them a lot to get anywhere if you want to get there quickly.
Lou’s competitors — huge national pizza chains — can afford to pay this toll. But Lou can’t, so he’s always stuck in the slow lane, which is more crowded than ever.
When a football fan orders one of Lou’s pizzas, it arrives in the fourth quarter instead of at halftime. Lou loses a lot of customers because the highway isn’t open to everyone equally.
