Posted on 08/01/2014 6:48:37 PM PDT by Nachum
The minimum-wage-hiker-in-chief will not be happy this morning. Former Obama administration economist Alan Krueger has some choice words for the hope-filled living-wage seekers of America:
*KRUEGER SAYS WORKERS NEED TO 'RATCHET DOWN WAGE EXPECTATIONS'
Isn't it odd how quickly the views of ethical economists change once they have tenure and the shackles of government-servitude are removed. We don't remember hearing Krueger arguing that a 'fair' wage is a little much to expect in the current environment.
It would appear Mr. Krueger should stop being cynical and just get hopey.
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If President Obama and his progressive ilk would take the government’s regulatory, health care mandating, and taxation boot off the backs of businesses, maybe those businesses would actually be able to pay employees more????
After a l-o-n-g discussion with The Owner today, I was able to wrangle meager raises for my full-time staff.
He is in TOTAL hunker-down mode with health insurance costs about to sky rocket, our shaky economy, major road construction that will disrupt our business for a full year within the next two years, etc. I TOTALLY understand.
And his loathing for 0bama is thinly, THINLY veiled, LOL! I love the guy! :)
I remind everyone (myself included!) that these days, keeping your job is the new ‘raise.’
But, we’re ALL Free Agents. Always have been, always will be. Develop a useful skill set that others are willing to PAY you for and you’re half way there. :)
Apparently Liberals do not seem to understand the law of Supply and Demand.
Supply is HIGH, as we have ~92 Million Americans out of work, it will be even higher when we bring in additional untold Millions of illegal Mexicans and their children.
Demand for the work, based on our economy is low, so the need for additional workers is non-existent.
It’s hard to explain High School level economics, to a person who is operating at a grade school level.
“Supply is HIGH, as we have ~92 Million Americans out of work, it will be even higher when we bring in additional untold Millions of illegal Mexicans and their children.”
I commented on another thread when someone said that as soon as the Mexicans got amnesty they would start earning more money. My reply was I doubt it, I think ours will come down to their wage level. That is how I read it.
“I commented on another thread when someone said that as soon as the Mexicans got amnesty they would start earning more money. My reply was I doubt it, I think ours will come down to their wage level. That is how I read it.”
That seems to be the case here in NJ, where we’ve had a de facto amnesty for years. Many jobs are simply minimum wage, and workers who lost skilled jobs and found other jobs doing the same work have taken serious pay cuts.
“I remind everyone (myself included!) that these days, keeping your job is the new ‘raise.’ “
Prior to the 2008 election, I remember watching a panel of talking heads on a cable news channel discussing the “new normal” after the financial collapse in the fall, and one (quite accurately) predicted that having a job would become the new status symbol.
“But, we’re ALL Free Agents. Always have been, always will be. Develop a useful skill set that others are willing to PAY you for and you’re half way there.”
Unfortunately for us free agents, anyone making over $40K has forces scrambling furiously behind the scenes to either bring in foreigners to do the work or send the work overseas. The destruction of manufacturing jobs decades ago is now being mirrored in the white-collar workforce; what happened in the tech field over the last twenty years is now reaching into the medical and financial fields as well. Free agency is great, but globalization is taking a toll.
Minimum wage is 7.25 or so an hour, then you take taxes and social security out of that if you are an American. Our local illegals, and there is a bunch, want 10 bucks an hour cash for unskilled labor.
Our county just picks up the illegals for driving without a license, no insurance and fine em a 1000 to 1200 bucks then release. The market at work.
This situation isn’t looking good for the home team.
The Law of Supply and Demand will not be broken. There are more workers seeking employment than there are jobs due to demographics, globalization and technology.
(The answer from Progressives , Dem and Rep, is to flood the borders. Go figure.)
“Our local illegals, and there is a bunch, want 10 bucks an hour cash for unskilled labor.”
Our illegals that got $10 per hour are all gone; the work dried up. Plenty of Americans either don’t have the money, they now have plenty of time on their hands to cut their own grass, or they lost the homes anyway.
In my area the illegals didn’t just want $10 per hour; they also wanted a full day’s work (if you had four hours of work, they would refuse it, saying they’d rather wait for someone with a full day’s work).
Anyway, the corners where they were picked up are vacant now; the work dried up, and many of them have moved on. We used to have a lot of them driving drunk, but I think between them moving on and the word getting out that it would be treated harshly, that seems to have dropped off. Seeing them pedaling to work in the morning on bicycles really reinforced to me that our standard of living is falling to meet that of Asia’s rising middle class.
In the holding camps the fedgov is paying illegals $3 a day for 4 hours of work.
Is that the new living wage?
I don’t know; I understand that in prison it is much lower.
You are kinder than I. I have an allergy to blind stupidity. When a stupid person says "When the illegals get jobs, they will pay taxes", I want to slap them. "Hey, genius - if poor people paying taxes produces wealth, then India and Mexico should be world super-powers, right?". The fact is the poor working class consume far more of the tax dollars than they provide- by a factor of at least 10x.
A poor family pays virtually NO taxes, unless they earn more than $40K, and at the ~$40k mark, they pay virtually zero - yet the hospitals, roads, police, fire department, sanitation, water and other programs need money to pay for the healthcare, WIC, food stamps, daycare, prisons, police, gang-squads and all the other associated programs that demand money. This is money that the upper class has to pay MORE for, so the parasites can consume.
And make NO MISTAKE about it - Parasites is precisely the right word. What are these illegals doing with the money they earn? Are they shipping it back to Mexico? Are they investing in a life here, pursuing American citizenship and dedicating their lives to this country? Odds are that the answer is a resounding 'No'. As soon as they have enough consumed here - they will run back "home". That's the very definition of a parasite- they feed off the host, without any concern of the well-being of the host; then they find something else to live off of.
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