Posted on 11/10/2013 3:39:21 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
I think we can all guess where this is heading.
I mentioned this week that the Democrats are definitively drawing up plans for their latest iteration of the (intellectually cheap, politically undemanding, and counterproductively harmful) push for a minimum-wage increase; no doubt ObamaCare’s many troubles really lit a fire under the strategy, as they’ll need something to talk about on the campaign trail that isn’t health-care related. In his State of the Union address at the start of the year, O brought up the idea of jacking up the minimum wage to $9/hour, but the Democrats are hankering for an (arbitrarily larger) increase to $10.10/hour, and it looks like the White House is getting ready to declare President Obama’s support for their specifics. Via the NYT:
The White House has thrown its weight behind a proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to at least $10 an hour.
“The president has long supported raising the minimum wage so hard-working Americans can have a decent wage for a day’s work to support their families and make ends meet,” a White House official said.
President Obama, the official continued, supports the Harkin-Miller bill, also known as the Fair Minimum Wage Act, which would raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, from its current $7.25.
The legislation is sponsored in the Senate by Tom Harkin of Iowa and in the House by George Miller of California, both Democrats. It would raise the minimum wage — in three steps of 95 cents each, taking place over two years — to $10.10, and then index it to inflation. The legislation will probably be coupled with some tax sweeteners for small businesses, traditionally the loudest opponents of increases to the minimum wage.
And in that same vein, you knew the budget conference that started post-shutdown wasn’t going to go smoothly, because Democrats were always going to demand still more revenue, a.k.a. taxes (rather than the slimmed-budget and lower taxes that could actually help to grow the economy and get us out of this godforsaken mess) as part of their negotiating stance, and it sounds like “tax breaks for corporate jet owners” is going to come back with a vengeance. From the National Journal:
Democratic members of the conference committee trying to work out a budget agreement have drafted a memo listing “egregious tax loopholes” that they plan to raise publicly as early as next week if Republicans continue to balk at considering some new tax revenue to help soften sequester cuts.
The items contained on the list range from such well-tread suggestions as ending special deductions for corporate jet owners, to stopping subsidies for yachts or vacation homes, to “closing a loophole that lets hedge fund managers pay lower tax rates on their income than teachers and firefighters.” The injection of such populism is sure to exacerbate the partisan tensions in the budget talks.
The memo, a copy of which was obtained Friday by National Journal, is already causing a stir on K Street. Most of that reflects worry that it represents a Democratic “hit list” that might be an early glimpse of some of what will be contained in a Senate version of a tax-code overhaul plan—rewrite work now being done in both chambers.
Yes, by all means, let’s simplify our convoluted tax code and get rid of all of these niche loopholes — but not as an unsubtle method to merely raise taxes, remove more money from the private sector, and beat the drums of class-warfare with wildly partisan ideas about “fairness” that don’t actually do anything significant to raise revenue or address our massive deficit problems.
Here we go again. …Not that we ever actually stopped.
It really should be $20.20/hour. Nobody can support a family for less than that.
/s
That’s exactly why the Tea Party scares the stuffing out of them. It’s the real thing.
One for all and all for none....
Subsumed to the collective.
Here’s how we beat this, Republicans come out for raising the minimum wage to $100.00 an hour.
Brilliant economists, these democrats.
So not a big issue for the Dem base.
How about $100 an hour? Then they could compete with Obama’s salary.
WE are “the men with the guns” in this. Every law enforcement and military person in this country (active and reserve) probably amounts to no more than 3 million individuals, tops. We are at least 100 million.
Republicans should refuse to take part in any of the Democrat issues that are an attempt to distract from Obamacare. Republicans in the Senate should simply vote present on any bill that they cannot win in the Senate, no compromise, no discussion of the issue.
In the House, Boehner should just refuse to bring the issues to a vote. The one issue that will need voting on is the farm bill. Then it is all the economy and OBAMACARE, 24/7 Obamacare.
Government has better organization, but that is not everything. God and guts account for something, maybe even more so.
This would be a good time for Republicans to get out to speak to minority groups to show how raising the minimum wage would be even MORE disastrous for the black and Hispanic communities than the situation is now.
“Brilliant economists, these democrats.”
At this point it’s very clear that the Democrat party doesn’t care about economics, or even governing for that matter. All that counts is winning elections and increasing their power.
Since the Obamacare clusterf**k will have alienated every productive citizen in the country by the time of the 2014 elections the Democrat’s only strategy is to go for the moochers big time.
Watch for endless Santa Claus legislation to be proposed in the next few months. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as 30 second radio spots can be crafted accusing Republicans of being heartless and greedy for opposing it.
Hard to envision the Dems reflecting any kind of genuine “populism” in this current era, when they themselves are so in control of Big Government, Big Business (Wall Street), Big Media, and Big Culture. They represent the ELITES moreso than anytime in American history.
There was a great opening for the GOP to tap into some real grassroots populism, going after corporatism, the corrupt media, bailouts, and the whole DC beltway system, back about four years ago. Palin was stoking that fire, and the tea-party was going in that direction. But the stupid GOP decided to take the exact opposite course, with Romney, who fit the caracature of a Richie Rich, lobbyist-friendly, zillionaire corporate-raider. An insane course that the GOP still wants to apparently cling to.
Corporate America has no one to blame but themselves. These men are good at business, but lousy in common sense civil leadership. Working with Wall Street they enjoy first hand knowledge, first to access money from Fed Reserve, they created a chaotic “creative destruction”, pump and dump, off shore, hire temp workers all in the name of keeping costs to absolute low and profits at an absolute high. This may make stock holders really happy and bonuses high but it can wreak havoc on the society of the nation they live in. When is the tempo of a dynamic economic system too dynamic. One does not really want to codify that into law because it is really an art. “Creative Destruction” occur in Soviet Union and Maoist China. One ushered an authoritarian oligarchy and one ushered in an authoritarian capitalist system. One died and one flourished. Reason why? The former Soviet leaders wanted to transition to capitalism without gauging the people’s ability to tolerate pain. China understood this limitation and implemented the transition using both capitalism and socialism.
American businessmen do not gauge the pain threshold of the American people. They think they can take anything corporate America dishes out to them. Problem is if the economic decisions make people miserable, they will vote for Democrats who will target corporate America and put in extreme leftists like Obama. If corporate America wants peace think before they make radical decisions. It is one thing to drag a corporation into chaos, it is another to drag the rest of America into it.
Nah, it should be $54.40. Think of all the great old campaign songs that could be recycled.
One form of irrationality is to seek causes without effects, which means taking a certain action while evading and expecting to escape its consequences.
Not only does raising the minimum wage lead to higher unemployment, but the extent to which it does so depends on the extent of union activity in the economic system. The more the unions close off employment opportunities, the greater is the number of workers forced to seek employment elsewhere, and thus the greater in the downward pressure on wage rates elsewhere.
Raising the minimum wage also denies many people the opportunity of acquiring work experience, knowledge, and skills they might have acquired by means of working. The least-skilled, most-disadvantaged members of society will be less able to compete. Thus, it tends to exert a lifelong depressing effect on people. It both stops them from working and prevents them from becoming qualified for anything better than the kind of low-skilled jobs to which a raise of the minimum-wage tends to apply. Many blacks will be condemned to a life of poverty, where the choice is between either looting parasitism of savages, or mooching parasitism of beggars on the welfare rolls, in order to survive in a modern developed market economy, where incomes are generated by a process of mutual voluntary exchange.
Finally, businesses that do not layoff workers will have to raise prices, which leads to a lower real wage rates for non minimum-wage workers, and a lower standard of living for the average wage earner.
The Republican Party absolutely sucks as messaging.
Excellent!
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