New York State appears ready to throw as many as 200,000 people out of work by imposing a $15 an hour minimum wage statewide.  Fredric U. Dicker reports in the New York Post:

Republican Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan is close to a “Faustian pact’’ with Democratic Gov. Cuomo to raise the state’s minimum wage to a national high of $15 an hour — boosting union power and possibly costing New York hundreds of thousands of jobs, The Post has learned.

A source close to Flanagan (R-Suffolk) said the deal would involve Cuomo agreeing to do “little if anything’’ to help Senate Democrats, now just one vote shy of a majority, win the upcoming April 19 special election to replace former Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-Nassau), who was ousted in December after being convicted on corruption charges.

Despite strong opposition from upstate business groups, the Farm Bureau, and not-for-profit organizations — as well as his own deputy Senate leader and state GOP Chairman Ed Cox — Flanagan has signaled he is ready “to cut a deal on the $15 minimum with Cuomo, likely for a longer phase-in time so that he can claim the Legislature will revisit the issue down the road,’’ said the source.

Pause for a moment and consider that, if this report is true (and Dicker is the dean of NY State politics correspondents), Democrats are willing to sacrifice control of a legislative body in pursuit of this goal. It is a strategic goal, intended to win a longer battle.  Progressives are rigidly determined to eliminate the possibility of people without educational credentials and social advantages to climb the ladder of economic success. Their chosen instrument is a high minimum wage that prevents employers from hiring people without the ability to generate value in excess of the wage.

The experience of Seattle, where the minimum wage was raised to $15, shows without a doubt that it costs jobs:

…while the city of Seattle experienced a sharp drop in employment of more than 11,000 jobs between April [when the first min wage hike took place] and December last year (light blue line, BLS data available here), employment in Seattle’s neighboring suburbs outside the city limits (the Seattle MSA jobs less Seattle city jobs) increased over that period by nearly 57,000 jobs and reached a new record high in November 2015 before falling slightly in December.

Progressives want this outcome for two reasons:

   - The unemployed are dependent on government handouts for their survival, and will vote for Democrats (the progressive party) to keep the benefits coming

    - People with ambition to be more than lumpen are forced to pay vast monies (often borrowed) to the education industry, which is owned and operated by progressives. While acquiring the credentials that may (or may not) enable them to get jobs at minimum wage or higher, they wull also be propagandized into progressivism.

This strategy is entirely cynical, sacrificing the welfare of others in order to enrich and empower progressives.

It makes me want to vomit.