Minimum wage just plain wrong

Editor, Index-Tribune:

I oppose any city ordinance to impose an increase in the minimum wage on businesses in Sonoma, because it is just plain wrong.

Small businesses will be crushed, once again, with another regulation (with the possible result of business closure) due to the voters’ self righteous indignation about insufficient income for workers.

I feel empathy for people who don’t earn enough, and if they can be helped, I’m all for it, with activities such as volunteering and fundraising.

Ultimately, if the voters feel a need to subsidize the working poor, then impose a tax. At least a tax would be spread among all people to pay for the problem, not imposing it on an already regulation-burdened segment of the population, the small business owner.

I’ve never owned a business, but I have worked mainly for small businesses all my life, and I’ve witnessed the struggles that owners have gone through in order to keep afloat. Ultimately, they were risking their own assets every day in order to be independent and to provide for themselves and their employees.

We don’t have the right to pick on the little guy just so that we can feel good about ourselves.

Robert Tenenbaum

Sonoma