Posted on 02/03/2012 8:09:13 AM PST by EricTheRed_VocalMinority
If I had a nickel for every time I had to go toe to toe with a liberal over the minimum wage, or came across literature petitioning my representatives to raise it, I'd almost be able to balance the budget.
The late great economist Milton Friedman has said it, Thomas Sowell and Walter E. Williams has said it: The minimum wage destroys jobs and slows the economy. And now El Rushbo is saying it. Because it's true.
Everything you need to know about the minimum wage is right here in these 13 minutes. School is open and the professor is in.
Some gems to listen for in this clip:
Have you seen the teenage unemployment rate in this country? Well, can you say 25%? It's 16%, 18%. It's way, way up there! The teenage unemployment rate, it's at record highs. Whatever it is, it is at a record high, and why do you think that is? In part, it's the minimum wage.
Businesses are having enough trouble as it is in this economy, and then to be told to go out and hire a bunch of people who have no experience and pay them an arbitrary amount of money that has no relationship to the business's operation or cost structure, is literally absurd! And so the only option the small businessman has is not hiring anybody. ... It's sort of like raising tax rates and these dummkopfs in Washington think, "Well, you raise the tax rate and these taxpayers just sit out there like a bunch of idiots and they'll pay it." And every time tax rates are increased, guess what? Revenue goes down!
* * * * *
If you want more of an activity, you cut taxes on it. If you want less of an activity, you raise taxes. If you want more homes sold, then you allow the interest on a mortgage to be deducted. If you don't want a lot of homes to be sold, take that deduction away. If you want to spur teenage hiring, lower the minimum wage or get rid of it. If you want to retard teenage hiring -- if you want to slow it down, if you want to limit the amount of teenagers to get jobs -- raise the cost of hiring them. And that's what an increase in the minimum wage is!
* * * * *
The national teenage unemployment rate in November, 21.4%. The teenage unemployment rate in Washington is over 50%. Now, who does the unemployment rate hit besides teenagers? It hits the unskilled worker. The unskilled worker who needs the first rung of that ladder. ...
The whole safety net idea is a disaster. It's robbing people of opportunity. It's robbing people of dignity. It's creating dependents. It's creating perpetual Democrat voters reproducing. That's what it is. That's what it was designed for. LBJ, FDR, that was the purpose in all it is, to create an ever-growing and perpetually renewing pool of Democrat voters who never learn to depend on themselves, who never learn the skills to support themselves. That's fine with the Democrat Party. That's fine with guys like Barack Obama.
Two things happen: Those people become dependent and then you run around and talk about how heartless and cruel the Republicans are for opposing ever more money in the policy to give them ever more benefits. So it's a double whammy for 'em. ... The real safety net is a job, and the minimum wage is one of the many obstacles in the way of people trying to find work in this economy.
* * * * *
This is another part of the charade the Democrats play: They try to convince you that every minimum wage earner is a 40-year-old, bedraggled person who the Republicans don't care about, who the Republicans are trying to keep poor and homeless, trying desperately in this horrid country to support a family of four. And the vast majority of people on the minimum wage are teenagers, young people.
If the minimum wage gets too high and then they start cracking down on interns, what's the next place business will go? Illegal aliens. You see how this works? The minimum wage can be said to be responsible for a whole bunch of problems in this country -- while a bunch of dummkopfs run around thinking with their hearts, "Oh, boy, is that compassion!"
[Edited for long silences, commercial breaks, and extraneous talking]
(Download clip here)
El Rushbo made one huge omission.
Rick “look at me, I’m the true conservative in the race” Santorum is also a BIG BIG BIG supporter of raising the minimum wage. Always has been .
The minimum wage is a baseline figure for every union contract. The contracts state an hourly wage above the minimum wage rate, effectively using the minimum wage as a zero baseline. So as an example, if a US Postal worker making $27 per hour sees a $1.00 per hour increase in the minimum wage, his or her hourly rate bumps up to $28 per hour on their current contract.
The minimum wage is nothing but a gratuity to federal and state labor unions.
You are absolutely right about that. The minimum wage is both a union contract canard and a phony compassion play at the same time.
Two good reasons to oppose it.
... and at the same time, slyly encourages people to vote for Santorum, whose own campaign literature bragged about the fact that Rick voted to INCREASE the NATIONAL minimum wage.
Now Mark Levin, that wonderful man, has called Romney down on the carpet about how he defines conservatism, and Mark has stated that there's a difference between a capitalist and a corporatist.
How long will it be before Rush slams him for "attacking capitalism" the way he slammed Newt? And BOTH Rush and Levin (certainly Levin) appear to be leaning toward Santorum, the VERY GUY who has touted his support for the minimum wage!
It is one big clusterf*ck.
Santorum Exposed -- Minimum Wage:
The Issue: Why won’t Rick Santorum help Pennsylvania workers earn a living wage?Yes, he did vote for a minimum wage increase in 1996. But how did a minimum wage increase get passed in the house, so that the senate could pass it and send it to the President, in 1996?:Rick has repeatedly voted against increasing the minimum wage
When he did propose a small increase, he excluded 10 million workers who live on tips, and even tried to end overtime pay beyond the 40 hour work week
Just who benefits from that? The owners of big chain restaurants like Outback Steakhouse. And big hourly employers like Wal-Mart. That’s who benefits No wonder Rick took the Wal-Mart corporate jet to Florida for a fancy political fundraiser with Outback Steakhouse executives
That was the same trip as Rick’s infamous visit to Terry Schiavo’s hospice when other events had been canceled out of “respect” for the Schiavo family.
Santorum has voted to stop increases in the minimum wage six times since 1995, using parliamentary tactics to prevent an actual vote on the issue.
...
Nine years later, in March 2005, Santorum voted against an amendment that would have increased the minimum wage by another $2.10 over the course of 28 months.
Gingrich Said to Vow Wage Vote Soon:
Under unrelenting pressure from Democrats and facing increasing clamor within his own party, Speaker Newt Gingrich today promised House Republicans who support increasing the Federal minimum wage a vote on the issue within a few weeks, several of them said.
This was part of the failed strategy of then-nominee Bob Dole to take away what looked like a popular issue for democrats in the 2006 election. I'm not arguing the merits, just pointing out that Santorum could vote with the majority for this because Newt cleared the way for it in the house.
Minimum Wage Increase Bill:
Newt Gingrich abstained from the vote on the bill; it passed the house 414-10.
Santorum did, to his discredit, support an increase in the minimum wage in 2006; however, his proposal also made other pro-business changes to the law, which got it denounced by those who wanted the minimum wage increased.
Rick I think did a bad job running for re-election; he was getting killed, he had little conservative support because of the Specter endorsement, and so he leaned left in his campaign rhetoric trying to get traction with a moderate Pa. Electorate. Not excusing it -- but I do not believe it is indicative of his general philosophy, or is disqualifying.
I think you are right in general - but you have to remember one thing: it is Santorum and his supporters who are floating the idea that Rick is the perfect conservative and has always stood up for the conservative value regardless of the political consequences. No other candidate and no other candidate’s supporters are claiming that.
Truth is, he ran a shameful weenie moderate to liberal campaign in 06 and minimum wage - something he BRAGGED ABOUT in 06 - is but one of many issues like this.
Romney’s position is shocking, given that his argument for election is that he is the savvy business person. As such, he should know that the minimum wage is a job-killer, and irrationally interferes with the contract between two private entities, the business and the employee.
I don’t actually think that indexing to inflation is the problem. It’s having a minimum wage. THe argument here seems to be that we are stuck with the minimum wage, so we should drive up inflation so the minimum wage becomes less of an issue. Gingrich has called for eliminating the Minimumn Wage, which is the right position (hard to do politically, even if we win both the house and senate, but we can’t shirk from hard things).
The mimimum wage gets bumped up — never down. Under some inflation scenarios, it is possible that indexing would prevent legislation that raises it even more. And indexing would be a predictable drag on business, rather than the random increases. But both those arguments concede a faulty premise — that we should have a minimum wage to begin with.
This is another case of Romney pandering to the general election crowd, in a way that could hurt him in the primaries. Which in this case, is a good thing!
And his bill, which had failed in his previous attempt, was defended by RedState as follows: Anti-Santorum Attacks are over the top:
His alternative proposal for increasing the minimum wage was actually a conservative bill that Democrats all voted against. Shortly after his bill failed, a new Congress passed a larger minimum wage increase. Had Santorum’s bill passed, the minimum wage would be lower now. His bill had republican supporters, and Dems opposed.
Here is how the left characterized his minimum wage bill: Rick Santorum's Phony Minimum Wage Bill:
When is an increase in the minimum wage not an increase in the minimum wage? When it’s an “increase” proposed by Republican Sen. Rick Santorum, and when it’s an “increase” that will be killed by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives anyway.Not exactly the "enthusiastic support" that some here claim.
...
Perhaps because the Florida vote makes them nervous about appearing to be against an increase in the minimum wage, Republicans have a proposal of their own. Under a plan proposed by Rick Santorum, the minimum wage would go up in two bumps over 18 months, ultimately reaching $6.25 an hour. That’s a dollar an hour less than the Kennedy plan — we’re quick with math here — but that’s not the worst of it. Santorum’s plan would also exempt from the minimum wage, and a whole host of other federal labor laws, any employer with revenues under $1 million; allow some employers to offset minimum wage salaries with tips workers receive; and rob many workers of overtime pay by instituting federal “flex-time” rules. Thus, workers would receive a smaller increase under Santorum’s plan, fewer of them would be protected by the federal minimum wage laws at all, and whatever gains some workers made through a minimum wage increase would be lost to offsets from tips or cutbacks in their overtime pay.
I agree that Santorum is not the perfect conservative. But that’s just the rhetoric that gets thrown around here — it’s a response to the claim that Santorum is a big-government liberal lying manchurian stalking horse for ROmney.
Each side exagerates their claims. I certainly did — if you read what I said about Perry, you’d think I thought he was the 2nd coming of Reagan (much like many Gingrich supporters have argued that if Gingrich disagreed with Reagan, it’s because Gingrich was much more like Reagan than Reagan was :->)
In the end, I lost some respect for Santorum back in 2006 because of how things ended for him. But I do understand it. And I think it is similar to, and maybe not as bad as, how I think Gingrich embrased the left’s talking points in order to gain prominence back on the political stage, and to soften his negatives, so he could run for President in 2012.
According to the site OnTheIssue, Rick Santorum’s voting record scores him as a hard-core conservative, with a 90 out of 100 on the economic scale, and a 0 out of 100 on the “social scale” (zero being GOOD for that measure).
Newt Gingrich gets a 90-20 rating from that same organization. Still is called a “hard-core conservative”, but his social score is 20 points worse than Santorum.
It is that social component that makes those who are social conservatives call Santorum “more conservative”. And note that while Santorum is attacked as a big-spending big-govermnent type, his score on economic issues is identical to Newt Gingrich. His voting record is pretty solid.
You and I agree more than disagree for sure. My only beef is Santorum’s stance in the debates, etc, that he’s far more pure than Newt. As your own research indicated, that is not the case. As for Newt, he never makes such a claim.
Fregards,
CEW
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