Minimum Wage, Jobs Increase
Earlier today I was reading the unfortunately named, but highly readable, blog: The Carpetbagger Report (at www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com). The topic was the minimum wage, and how a $1 an hour increase had not caused massive job loss and the derailment of the economy here in Florida. And yet, the service sector industries continue to forecast doom and gloom where ever a like increase is considered anywhere in the country.There has to be an emotional block going on here, because the rationale as to why an increase in minimum wage helps the economy is so obvious that even Wal-Mart is campaigning for it. Low income families spend every penny they get. If their wages go up, they buy clothes, or medicines, or pay for car repairs. Thus demand for consumer goods increases, and conditions become favorable for the creation of new jobs, even at the "high" wage levels of $6.15 per hour (soon to be $6.40).
This is not just theory. The scenario of increased jobs and better economies occurred at the initiation of a minimum wage, and has been repeated every time an increase has been passed. Voters, who are very close to this issue and are not being offered trips to Scotland in exchange for their votes, understand this instinctively. That's why constitutional amendments or other direct appeals to voters pass by over 70% even in Florida, which is not a wildly liberal state.
On the other hand, the theory that minimum wage increases will force lay-offs and doom businesses to extinction has never panned out. Neither has the companion theory: that the only sure way to stimulate production is to reduce or eliminate taxes on capital (along with reductions in tax rates for the wealthy). Surely we have tried trickle-down economics enough to recognize a loser when we see it. Just having capital is no reason to invest in production capacity, especially when there are already warehouses full of unsold appliances, cars, and clothes. To get factories running again, we have to produce large-scale demand. Placing ever more money in the hands of the ultra rich does very little to increase demand, because there is a limit to how much even the ultra-wealthy can spend, and the Bush beneficiaries passed that mark long ago. The more they get, the less percentage gets returned back to the economy. The rest goes to off-shore banks and European antiques.
The constant refrain of the red zone is that liberals don't pay attention to facts, but I find that a hard sell. The conservative idealogues have taken obliviousness to facts and consequences to levels that are bewildering, and show no signs of stopping.
posted by Lenore Wilson @ 12:07 PM
3 Comments:
I think this is just another example of how the worker is blamed for the failing of a company instead of the losers in the front office. Take for example the "Situation" at GM. They are laying off thousands of employees; cutting benefits to people that have earned them and are already using them. They do all of this and blame the "union" for their problems. But there is no one on the production line making millions of dollars. It is not the union workers that have mismanaged the company and designed poor automobiles. It is the management that has done that. Yet, when someone screws up a company instead of getting fired, they are "severed" and given millions in "severance pay," for doing a poor job. There is something wrong with this picture.
Blaming the worker is not going to work anymore....I fear that we are on the precipice of full scale industrial war, just like we had in the early 20th century. And it is not going to be pretty.
Solidarity,
CM
You have greater expectations than I, Carter. :) Maybe I'll carry on with a little blame the victim game of my own, but it really seems that the people who are screwed the most by the system are the very ones who demand more of the same failing system. It's those damn liberals who refuse to look at the facts! And the Communist Network News! We are definitely in need of a better education system over here.
Yes, yes complain all you want about the Communist New Net work, but at least they are better than the fools at the Fascist Order of Xenophobes.
But I get your point. That is what scares me. Hitler was able to capitalize on the fears of the workers to seize power. Same with Franco, Peron, et al. That is why we have to be out there educating and organizing, even when the cause seems lost.
I guess I am an ultimate optimist. I believe that eventually history is inevitable and that the long march forward into progress can be slowed, but can not be stopped.
It is like the old mural in the Irish section of Belfast: "You can kill the Revolutionary, but never the Revolution."
CM
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