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Socialism, Seattle Style - Kshama Sawant's $15 per hour job killer
American Spectator ^ | May 7, 2014 | Keli Carender

Posted on 05/07/2014 5:19:48 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife

"............................Educated, articulate and well versed in the recitation of neo-Marxist agitprop, [Seattle Council Woman Kshama Sawant]clearly has read many books and been taught many things that aren’t so.

Such is the case with Sawant’s core mission of raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour because she believes it helps poor people. She is convinced that she can, by decree, override the laws of economics from her perch on Seattle’s city council. “Victory in the fight for $15 an hour will mean a substantial improvement in the standards of living of working people in Seattle,” Sawant...in a recent interview[,]“A real class struggle like the fight for $15 in Seattle will energize and empower workers, raise their confidence and morale and make them realize that this is what we need to do.”...

Problem is, her proposal is destined to deliver a lower standard of living for the people who brought her into office and raise unemployment among those who most need a job...........

In 2012, a team of researchers from Cornell, the University of Oregon, and San Diego State University studied the effects of raising the minimum wage in New York State between 2004 and 2006. Their conclusion was about as close to unequivocal as a reputable researcher can get. “We find robust evidence that raising the New York minimum wage from $5.15 to $6.75 per hour significantly reduced employment rates of less-skilled, less-educated New Yorkers,” they determined. Their findings are not isolated and have been replicated time and again in similarly rigorous research.

While Sawant might be tempted to dismiss this as employers merely seeking “revenge” by hiring fewer people, it’s little more than quantifying human nature and business behavior; the more expensive something becomes, the less of it we consume. Alas, this fact is lost on socialists and other social engineers like Sawant.........

(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Editorial; Government
KEYWORDS: capitalism; middleclass; minimumwage; socialism
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1 posted on 05/07/2014 5:19:48 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
Seattle Council Woman Kshama Sawant
From Wikipedia:Ain't progress just swell?
2 posted on 05/07/2014 5:28:51 AM PDT by oh8eleven (RVN '67-'68)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

I used to give socialists the benefit of the doubt and assume they were monumentally stupid. Over time I have realized that the overwhelming majority of leftists are simply evil. They know these policies will harm those they pretend they want to help, and they don’t care.

By harming the poor, Liberals make more people dependent on government and gain power over those people. Their lust for power is more important to them than the compassion normal people have for each other.


3 posted on 05/07/2014 5:30:17 AM PDT by Pollster1 ("Shall not be infringed" is unambiguous.)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

Creeps like this want to change America into the s&^% holes they came from.

Why?

They could have just STAYED HOME!


4 posted on 05/07/2014 5:32:40 AM PDT by SMARTY ("When you blame others, you give up your power to change." Robert Anthony)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

Does anybody ever mention the harm that raising the minimum wage does to those with min wage jobs? It takes away the incentive for these people to better themselves. It keeps tem stuck in mind-numbing boring jobs. Pay somebody $15 to sweep floors and it becomes a whole lot less urgent to take some classes or work a little harder to move on up.
Minimum wages and raiding minimum wages hurts the poor. Keeps them down.


5 posted on 05/07/2014 5:34:46 AM PDT by all the best (sat`~!)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
While Sawant might be tempted to dismiss this as employers merely seeking “revenge” by hiring fewer people

The combination of massive ignorance with overwhelming arrogance pretty much defines liberal politicians. And the dumber and more ignorant they are the more convinced they are that their ideas are right. Look at every liberal politician in the country. They may appear to look different, but fundamentally they are all the same.

I could go on, but you all know this anyway (or you'd be posting on DU) The two best things about government work are
  1. You get to spend other peoples' money that they worked hard for and
  2. You never have to face any personal consequences for bad decisions

6 posted on 05/07/2014 5:35:15 AM PDT by from occupied ga (Your government is your most dangerous enemy)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

We really do need this to focus the debate. Let some Socialist Paradise city in the US hike the minimum wage to $15 per hour. Hell, let them hike it to $25 per hour. Now THAT’S a “living wage.” It will clear up all the BS from the debate.


7 posted on 05/07/2014 6:03:16 AM PDT by Opinionated Blowhard ("When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.")
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

Common sense (of which libs are sorely lacking) would show what an obvious job-killer hiking the minimum wage is. To wit:

I need my lawn mowed. It takes 3 hours to do it, and I provide the lawnmower and gasoline. I am willing to pay $30 to have it done. If it costs more than that, I’ll bite the bullet and do it myself.

Someone willing to work for $10/hour gets the job. If I have to pay $15, it ain’t gonna happen.


8 posted on 05/07/2014 6:20:11 AM PDT by TruthShallSetYouFree (Jay Carney: The (Benghazi) emails weren't about Benghazi.)
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To: TruthShallSetYouFree

Why does this seattle marxist idiot hate people so much? Her hatred is obvious in that she isn’t raising all pay to infinity.


9 posted on 05/07/2014 6:39:12 AM PDT by hal ogen (First Amendment or Reeducation Camp?)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

Based on the breakneck speed with which mainline Republicans (Rick Santorum, Tim Pawlenty) appear to be embracing her position, this looks to be the wave of the future.

Polling must say 80% of our LIV countrymen are all for it.


10 posted on 05/07/2014 6:42:16 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
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To: from occupied ga

Good bullet points - well said. You can add these as well:

- Reacting to criticism with anger, shame, or humiliation

- Taking advantage of others to reach own goals

- Exaggerating own importance, achievements, and talents

- Imagining unrealistic fantasies of success, beauty, power, intelligence, or romance

- Requiring constant attention and positive reinforcement from others

- Becoming jealous easily

- LACKING EMPATHY and disregarding the feelings of others (that is the big one - the “tell”)

- Being obsessed with self

- Pursuing mainly selfish goals

- Trouble keeping healthy relationships

- Becoming easily hurt and rejected

- Setting goals that are unrealistic

- Wanting “the best” of everything

The critteria for Narcissism (I actually LIKE that typo - more on my profile)
Cheers!


11 posted on 05/07/2014 6:48:02 AM PDT by spankalib ("I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.")
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
I'll go you one better:

California Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee, one her party’s most progressive members, thinks her home state should increase its minimum wage to as much as $26 an hour.

12 posted on 05/07/2014 6:48:09 AM PDT by tbpiper
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

Its not that she doesn’t know about economics.
Liberals know the ramifications of this type stuff.
They are simply doing this to garner votes... to look like they ‘care about the poor people’.
I mean, I have no formal economics training or schooling whatsoever and even I have enough common sense to see this idea is beyond ignernt.

Then again, they could really be that stupid.


13 posted on 05/07/2014 6:57:37 AM PDT by envisio (Its on like Donkey Kong!)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

We need to be careful with the predictions here.

The big minimum wage hike in Seattle (or San Francisco, or Manhattan) probably won’t have much of an effect on employment numbers THERE, and wrongly predicting that this will happen could deprive us of credibility when the battle is fought elsewhere.

Companies employing low skill labor in those places already face sky high costs and manage to make big profits anyway; costs of labor are quite low as a percentage of overall costs (rent, insurance, etc.), and higher costs can easily be passed on. Anybody who doesn’t need to be in the high cost area, already isn’t there — and they aren’t going to move for a few percentage point more in their costs.

EXTREMELY different story out in the rest of the country, but the rest of the country will pay the price if big cities are conceded to be the testing ground.


14 posted on 05/07/2014 7:01:29 AM PDT by only1percent
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

Has anyone seen Starbucks taking a position on this?


15 posted on 05/07/2014 7:05:36 AM PDT by goodnesswins (R.I.P. Doherty, Smith, Stevens, Woods.)
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To: Opinionated Blowhard

Why not $100 an hour?


16 posted on 05/07/2014 7:06:55 AM PDT by envisio (Its on like Donkey Kong!)
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To: envisio

An ALDI store near me is advertising for help starting at $12 an hour.

However, they’ve designed their stores to run at very high efficiency. I doubt there are more than five or six employees in the building, even at peak times.

And they’ll really earn it. Every moment they aren’t ringing a register they are out restocking the floor.


17 posted on 05/07/2014 7:13:09 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
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To: goodnesswins

Think about the states taking a position on it. They have a lot of minimum wage jobs. Especially student worker positions at universities.


18 posted on 05/07/2014 7:16:34 AM PDT by AppyPappy
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To: Buckeye McFrog

Aldi’s does a great job, I really like to go there. They are by far the best value grocery store in my area.

Seattle, enjoy your $7.00 Big Macs and $9.00 lattes.


19 posted on 05/07/2014 7:33:59 AM PDT by phormer phrog phlyer
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To: all the best

“Does anybody ever mention the harm that raising the minimum wage does to those with min wage jobs? It takes away the incentive for these people to better themselves. It keeps tem stuck in mind-numbing boring jobs. Pay somebody $15 to sweep floors and it becomes a whole lot less urgent to take some classes or work a little harder to move on up.
Minimum wages and raiding minimum wages hurts the poor. Keeps them down.”

This is what liberals do. There is always a static model, and they are so damn smart they can figure out how to wiggle exactly and only one variable in it and nobody else can.

To your comment: Not to mention....that some small but non-zero number of those who cannot find jobs will turn to criminality out of a combination of desperation and weak morals (how racist of me for thinking that but not of “you” for thinking that I was thinking about any particular race) and commit property and person crimes which can easily impose 5 and 6-figure costs upon society. So when a newly unemployed person commits a simple act of shoplifting and is simply diverted to some sort of probation program....it probably imposes $10K or $15K worth of costs on the system. That’s 2000 hours or one person-year of the $5 per hour raise that somebody else got due to the minimum wage bump.

Or suppose the same shoplifter person finds themselves in the county slammer for 3 months. Probably about the same overall system cost.

But now suppose they beat and rob their neighbor and the neighbor ends up in the ICU at an unreimbursed cost of $100,000. That’s ten person-years of system costs imposed.

It takes no kind of economics PHd to see these secondary and tertiary effects but when you can make a goofball assertion about how wonderful life will be under your hackneyed and proven-wrong utopian vision, the negative consequences for which you will never be held to account, it’s a piece of socialist cake.


20 posted on 05/07/2014 8:13:40 AM PDT by Attention Surplus Disorder (At no time was the Obama administration aware of what the Obama administration was doing)
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