So let’s not try to reinvent the wheel here in our response to the latest iteration of leftist populism.
Instead, let’s discuss the unassailable logic redounding against mandatory minimum wage hikes — that forcing companies to pay more for what are supposed to be entry level jobs means they are less likely to hire entry level employees to take those jobs; and that the more money a company is forced to pay per employee (by something other than market forces and something much closer to mandatory price controls), the less money it has, overall, for its employee pull, causing 1) either a net decrease in jobs, or 2) an increase to the cost of the consumer on the back end of the mandatory increase.
In every instance, the young, inexperienced, lesser-educated, and — statistically speaking, minority populations — suffer most. While labor unions, pretending to push for the little guy, continue to price out the competition — the young, those looking for first time jobs — while increasing their own wages, which are tied oftentimes to the contracts that increase union wages by percentage equal to minimum wage increases.
So it’s not only that raising the minimum wage isn’t about compassion, caring, “living wages,” or employment in the first place, but worse still, it’s a boon to the left’s big labor army, and a net killer of jobs and the experience required to get jobs, then move up with pluck and hard work, that has increasingly become less the ideal than described as a kind of sickness of capitalism cured only by the compassion of a nannystate, cradle-to-grave entitlement culture and wealth redistribution schemes that, for politicians, at least, only seem to go one way: toward their power, influence, and financial security.
Which is why there’s no reason the GOP needs to fight this fight — save for the fact that today’s GOP is convinced it has to disguise itself as Democrat populists in order to win support from those who, out of sheer exhaustion, are beginning to resign themselves to their roles as dependents on the state.
The answer to this populist propaganda push by the left is to note how many people Obama has already put out of work; how many of the “jobs created” under this administration are of the part-time variety (with more to come), and that — with a minimum wage increase forced upon already struggling businesses — even that number will necessarily take a hit right in the shorts. Because if minimum wage increases actual did help with jobs and families, why in the hell are we constantly told the situation is so dire that we need new ones? If the last fix didn’t take, why would the new fix finally put things “right”?
And we all know the answer to that, because we aren’t economic illiterates of the type who vote for people who tell you you can have free stuff, your costs will go down, and your choices will go up, all because a racist country has finally done the courageous thing and elected what one liberal writer called “the Magic Negro.”
Unfortunately, though, too many of our fellow citizens are of that type. At least, they were. I guess it remains to be seen if they can be taught, or if the Pavlovian conditioning of liberal treat dispensers has proven too permanent, and Skinner’s Walden II is our fate.
Here, then, again, is Milton Friedman, on the minimum wage:
Thoughtful legislation could prevent this from happening ;)
You say that like it’s a bad thing. On the plus side: another problem for which government is the solution!
Are these impending trainwrecks bugs, or features? I am beginning to suspect the latter.
What are your thoughts on Guaranteed Work for Everybody?
Ignored in much of the talk of raising minimum wages is the cost to the employer in training a new employee.
It doesn’t matter if you are teaching them to run a register or how to properly stack bags of feed at the Co-Op, you are going to have lost productivity while that employee is being trained. Should New Employee decide that ringing up purchases at the gas station is a whole lot less fun than sitting at home with the PS3 and up and quits, he or she leaves the employer in the lurch. The employer may decide to save the lost time (time is money, after all) of training another newbie and make due with the staff he has in situ.
Thoughtful legislation could prevent this from happening ;)
Yup. High wages for those working, low prices for those buying, and free unicorns by Executive Order. Works every time.
We speak as one on this, Drum.
Let’s not forget that “minimum wage” was instituted by the proggs to price “undesirables” out of the job market.
Africans, that is. Africans and Jews and probably Catholics.
So employers pay so little that their employees require government programs to survive. Most Walmart and fast food employees are on food stamps, most have children, most are adults – not these fictive teens you keep trotting out. Government programs being the evil #dependence inducing regimes that they are – how do you solve the problem?
If employers are going to pay shit people will need to eat so they’ll go to the government to help. You can keep wages low and also cut the safety net which just means people will die. You can’t have both because it just creates a slave class.
So the solution is to give amnesty to millions more, rather than making it easier and less expensive to hire people?
When a commodity (and labor is a commodity just as sure as iron ore or lumber is) has higher prices forced on the market for that commodity specifically due to government interference, is it any surprise that fewer people buy that commodity, preferring instead to make do with what low levels of that commodity they already have access to?
See also “tobacco tax”.
Dale. Don’t lie. It insults me and makes you look stupid.
Unemployment among high school aged blacks, male and female, is FOUR TIMES HIGHER than any other same age group . Mandatory minimum wage will guarantee it stays that way.
So now, everyone working for minimum wage works for Walmart or a fast-food franchise?
Surprise! Walmart health plan is cheaper, offers more coverage than Obamacare
dale, minimum wages aren’t meant to be a living wage. They are scaled for the unskilled, entry level worker and designed to spur the employee to improve his lot and thus earn more.
How’s the “advanced degree” coming along? Still living at home?
If you are still making minimum wage after two or three years in the same job, then the problem is YOU, not the job.
Living in Manhattan. Thesis is due in Spring. Cheers
The one in Kansas has a much more livable cost of living, you know.
The one in Kansas . . .
But for a coaster, the little apple stands in too great a proximity to a base of (grubby) militarism, a seat of murder itself, that big red one, donchaknow.
Thesis is due in Spring
Best of luck. What is your thesis topic?
McGhee, word. Hence the Ph.D applications to schools in Idaho, Newfoundland, and Ontario. Cheap living plus the educational benefits of social democracy can’t be beat.
McGhee, word. Hence the Ph.D applications to schools in Idaho, Newfoundland, and Ontario. Cheap living in one scenario and the educational benefits of social democracy can’t be beat.
Government programs being the evil #dependence inducing regimes that they are – how do you solve the problem?
To ask the question is to answer it. Freed of the shackles of over-regulation, our business community would grow and thrive, as all of the dollars spent on busybody regulators, and all the hours spent ticking boxes on federal forms for the aforementioned busybodies, could be turned to investment and innovation. The economic growth spurred by putting trillions of dollars back into productive use would create hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of new jobs, jobs which could be filled by those currently mired in the misery of having to work three part-time minimum-wage jobs just to make ends meet. This, in turn, would free up those jobs to be taken by the teenagers and unskilled newcomers who need the entry-level experience to start their way up the ladder to economic success.
Honestly, you’d be astounded at the things we could accomplish if we just stopped pouring a quarter of our time and money into the giant, sucking black hole of waste and counterproductive feel-good nonsense that is the modern welfare state.
And a word to the wise: don’t attempt cheap irony by accidentally stating a fundamental economic truth. It just makes you look foolish.
Newfoundland,
Unless you like the great outdoors or like to drink a lot you might want to rethink this one.
I hope your Phd isn’t in economics.
I suggest getting “Iceberg Hunters” on DVD to learn Newfish if you’re going up there.
Hint: when a Newfie says, “boy” it’s got nothing to do with an imaginary senior African-Canadian passerby, and probably nothing to do with a dog.
Mueller, Memorial U. has a top notch environmental sociology faculty and apparently enough booze to keep anyone through the winter. So outdoors yes, and other hobbies, yes as well.
PhD, ain’t what it used to be.
notch environmental sociology faculty
sigh
ost Walmart and fast food employees are on food stamps, most have children, most are adults – not these fictive teens you keep trotting out. Government programs being the evil #dependence inducing regimes that they are – how do you solve the problem?
If employers are going to pay shit people will need to eat so they’ll go to the government to help. You can keep wages low and also cut the safety net which just means people will die.
Do you actually know any of these starving, minimum wage Walmart /fast food workers?
Because I do. And believe me, many of their problems aren’t caused by their minimum wage income.
“environmental sociology”?
Is that anything like “Phlostigon Psychology”? (I would also wonder whether they even mention the Tragedy of the Commons in their concern for environmental societies.)
Hey, at least he’s not in Gender studies.
He may as well be. It is a major not suited to working anywhere except in a university.
Good luck with that.
Environmental sociology is one of the reasons I keep talking my son out of going to college. He’s working in our shop, learning how capitalism works.
College is a waste of time for most people unless it’s necessary to drive your career up the road. Majoring in Communications (read: beer pong) isn’t going to go too far. Your son could hone his mad skillz at the shop and at the community college where there are babes, since you need him around to lend a hand. (How’s hubby, btw?) The world is always going to need tradesmen and there’s nothing shabby about doing manly jobs, either. Tell Son to keep a weather eye to all his pals who drop out and owe large bank for their unfinished educations. You can always add an “And Son” to your sign, Mom.
My youngest is keen on being an astrophysicist. He’s going to double major in undergrad in math and physics and then apply to grad school at Cal Tech and Berkeley. He’s already snagged a scholarship for undergrad, too.
My nephew majored in philosophy and religion at college. After graduating and spending several years trying to scratch out a living playing bar gigs and waiting tables, he’s going back to school in electrical engineering.
Which, I don’t tell him, is pretty much in line with my early suggestions for a career in science and technology, given his math skills and various other talents.
I think it’s fine to get an advanced degree. You just have to figure out how to make it through life if that degree doesn’t pave a path for you to comfortable remuneration.
Good for him! At least he’s in a field of study that is, so far, largely untouched by politics.
Environmental Sociology? Didn’t that used to be called Ecology?
Or is that one of those dealios where the modifier negates the modified instead of refining it?
Like like “social justice” say?
Slarti, he’s a natural. One of those people who finds higher mathematics and physics intuitive. Lord knows where he got all that from, but he looks just like me so there’s no switched at the hospital story.
He also doesn’t suffer fools gladly. He’s in the perfect field of study for him.
It’s just Comte, like Protagoras before him, poking his head up from the sand, though in Comte’s case, uninvited.
If his statue is to be believed Protagoras looked kind of like Jeff Daniels.
http://www.greatthoughtstreasury.com/sites/default/files/600full-protagoras%5B1%5D.jpg
http://movieboozer.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Jeff-Daniels-Squid-Whale.jpg
Altruism? Blech.
Okay, 2nd try for Protagoras pic.
http://www.maltahumanist.org/sites/maltahumanist.org/files/protagoras%5B2%5D.jpg
Was he Dumb, or was he Dumberer?
Travis on “Iceberg Hunters” had a degree in that I believe.
Dalekhunter says January 7, 2014 at 1:29 pm
Mueller, Memorial U. has a top notch environmental sociology faculty and apparently enough booze to keep anyone through the winter. So outdoors yes, and other hobbies, yes as well.
– See more at: https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=52390#comments
Aw, jeeze. Wasn’t that the school that put the solar panels on the north side of the building?
I’m not kidding.
Wave at the Come by Chance (real name of the town)refinery when you drive by. I spent some time there in the late 70s early eighties.
Tuition has to be astronomical, it being in a different country and private, to boot. They have a badass botanical gardens, though.
Shit.
http://bearingarms.com/southport-nc-cop-shoots-tased-and-restrained-90-pound-hs-student-after-allegedly-stating-we-dont-have-time-for-this/
I would encourage everyone to learn a trade of some kind. If you want to go to college, work a few years first. You will have no problem getting accepted, and since it’s likely you will be doing hard work, you’ll appreciate school more.
If you want to study something useless, I suggest you learn a trade and read books on the useless stuff.
Paleo, that’s Murder 1.
Here’s the statute defining it, and the premeditation is clear. The victim (tased and with two officers holding him down) was already restrained and there is no minimum amount of time needed to qualify as “premeditation”. Just the thought, “I have a gun, and I am going to kill this person” is sufficient.
Good god! What the hell kind of vigilante cops do they grow there in North Carolina? The family should sue the living crap out of the cop, his family, the city and the police department.
For Pete’s sake, I can restrain a 90 pound kid with a screwdriver and I’m not a whole lot heavier. Three grown ass cops can’t?
I think the cop ought to have “former cop & child killer” tattooed on his face, then be set free in the general prison population.
Justice will pay him a visit sooner or later.
Seconded!
Justice will pay him a visit sooner or later.
Let’s hope he doesn’t make bond, flight risk or some such.
They don’t give bail to those awaiting life-without-parole or worse…
I guess it’s on the DA to charge him with Murder One or is it Capital Murder in NC?
It’s technically “Murder in the First Degree” (see above), and the story mentioned the State bureau investigating. I imagine there is a civil rights case to be made at the Federal level once that’s done, not to mention “wrongful death” against the cop (and his family, heirs and assigns), the police department and the city…
At least six zeroes before the decimal point, is my guess.
That’s a good start. I’m almost ready to endorse lawyers going after over-zealous cops in a class action suit. This kind of thing is happening way too often.
The good news, perhaps, is that the other officers involved belong to different agencies. So maybe, maybe, the blue wall of silence won’t be so silent this time.
cranky-d says January 7, 2014 at 4:59 pm
I would encourage everyone to learn a trade of some kind.
– See more at: https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=52390#comments
Maybe Dale could learn to club baby seals.
Having been on the receiving end of his first-rate rhetoric around here, I’m betting Dale could sell ice to the locals.