Minimum Wage, Maximum Stupidity

By Doug French, Contributing Editor

The minimum wage should be the easiest issue to understand for the economically savvy. If the government arbitrarily sets a floor for wages above that set by the market, jobs will be lost. Even the Congressional Budget Office admits that 500,000 jobs would be lost with a $10.10 federal minimum wage. Who knows how high the real number would be?

Yet here we go again with the “Raise the minimum wage” talk at a time when unemployment is still devastating much of the country. The number of Americans jobless for 27 weeks or more is still 3.37 million. And while that’s only half the 6.8 million that were long-term unemployed in 2010, most of the other half didn’t find work. Four-fifths of them just gave up.

So, good economics and better sense would say, “make employment cheaper.” More of anything is demanded if the price goes down. That would mean lowering the minimum wage and undoing a number of cumbersome employment regulations that drive up the cost of jobs.

But then as H.L. Mencken reminded us years ago, “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” Which means the illogical case made by Republican multimillionaire businessman Ron Unz is being taken seriously.

We Don’t Want No Stinkin' Entry Level Jobs Continue reading "Minimum Wage, Maximum Stupidity"

"Reverse the forces that have conspired for decades against working Americans" Imagine who said those words?

For some reason, I received an email this past Labor Day from the White House. I am not sure how theWhite House acquired my email address but, I guess I could ask the NSA. I was not alone as I'm sure this same email went out to millions of other Americans.whitehouse 2 email

I decided to join in the fun and watch the video. As I expected, there were a lot of warm and fuzzy words and images of workers in factories. What came next, after 1 minute and 26 seconds really shocked me, the President of the United States said these words...

"reverse the forces that have conspired for decades against working Americans".

You can view the video here or click on the White House email image.

Who the heck was President Obama referring to when he used those exact words, "reverse the forces that have conspired for decades against working Americans"?

These words really bothered me; I could not believe what I was hearing. A Conspiracy? Did I miss something? Do you mean that all companies have been conspiring against their workers for decades Mr. President? If not companies, then who is conspiring against American workers? American workers made this country great, and for the most part they are well paid and respected.
Continue reading ""Reverse the forces that have conspired for decades against working Americans" Imagine who said those words?"