Posted on 02/06/2014 6:33:06 AM PST by SeekAndFind
In one of his typical efforts at whipping up public support for himself by promising the impossible, President Obama has been touting the supposed benefits of mandatory wage increases. He has already decreed an increase in the minimum hourly pay for workers employed on federal projects and wants Congress to increase the federal minimum wage for most other workers from $7.25 to $10.10 per hour.
He and his handlers are aware, however, that quite a few Americans have enough economic sense between their ears to wonder if mandatory wage increases won’t cause some workers at the bottom of the wage scale to lose their jobs. In an attempt at deflecting such arguments, Obama has been resorting to a piece of economic disinformation – the notion that Henry Ford raised wages for his assembly line workers in 1914 so that they could “afford to buy the product.”
In a recent speech in Maryland, Obama told his audience, “Henry Ford realized he could sell more cars if his workers made enough money to buy the cars. He had started this – factories and mass production and all that, but then he realized, if my workers aren’t getting paid, they won’t be able to buy the cars. And then I can’t make a profit….But if I pay my workers a good wage, they can buy my product, I make more cars. Ultimately… it’s a win-win for everybody.”
The idea that because Ford benefited from a large increase in pay for some of his workers, it therefore must be true that all companies would benefit from a mandated increase in pay for their lowest skill workers is such a stupendous non-sequitur that only a politician who is sure he will never be called on it would advance this argument.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Some people, including Obama can’t read Snopes or factcheck. It’s a shame that we have leavers with MBA’s that are too stupid to research what’s in the speeches given to them by a low level speech writer
Obama frequently says one thing while actually doing another.
There’s no doubt that raising the minimum wage decreases the demand for minimum wage labor.
Will the minimum wage increase primarily benefit his union backers, whose contracts often call for a differential above the minimum wage? In other words, is he (or are his advisers) smart enough to simultaneously whip up support from the poor while actually giving a raise to their better-off union backers?
Henry Ford was not a real nice person. He must be laughing his butt off somewhere......................
By all reasonable metrics the Obama administration has been an abject failure. The only thing they have long pointed to as Obama’s “signature issue”, Obamacare, is an utter disaster that will not survive.
Outside of the economic devastation and one foreign policy disaster after another has Obama done?
In five years, just what can Obama point to as an accomplishment? What?
There is NOTHING. This administration has been an unmitigated disaster for the country.
Every day, Obama says something stupider than the day before.
Obummer is desperate to increase the welfare rolls by increasing unemployment—which would be the direct result of increasing the minimum wage. He is afraid the Tea Party will produce a conservative House and Senate in 2014 that will block or impeach him.
Even his Lefty supporters are starting to realize he promised them Utopia and delivered up jack. Hence the sudden rush to jump on these issues.
Everyday With Obama
With apologies to The Classics Four - Every Day With You Girl
Every day with Obama
Is dumber than the day before
Everyday I despise you more and more
More and more and more
They’re saying that all bad dreams must come to an end
But Obama it isn’t true
Each day with you I fall in asleep again
Everyday with Obama
Is dumber than the day before
Everyday I despise you more and more
More and more and more
And when I got to sleep at night time
Tomorrow’s what I’m praying for
Cause everyday with Obama
Is dumber than the day before
Isn’t Obama intelligent enough to realize that Ford CHOSE to give his employees higher wages,he wasn’t FORCED to do it by the government?
No one would have a problem with that.
We have the stupidest president in history.
.
If that story is true, Obama defeats his own argument. Henry Ford made that decision based on his calculation on what was best for his company, not because government forced him to do it.
Every company’s situation is different and government should butt out.
RE: Obama frequently says one thing while actually doing another.
Yep, as Jonah Goldberg observes in his Townhall column:
In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal touting the order, the president wrote: “We’re also getting rid of absurd and unnecessary paperwork requirements that waste time and money.”
Laymen might have the impression the president wants to cut red tape and take action on job-creating infrastructure, particularly oil and gas projects.
The fools.
On Friday, the State Department issued a much-awaited study on the Keystone XL pipeline. It found that there would be negligible effect on climate change — the president’s only expressed reservation about the project, which would create thousands of construction jobs and generate billions in tax revenue.
In fact, the study concluded that if the pipeline from Canada is not built, it could result in a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions. That’s because the alternative means (trucks, rail, etc.) of transporting the fuel — which Canada says will be pumped no matter what — are more carbon intensive than a pipeline.
So we’re a go, right? Au contraire, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough explained Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” The State Department study is but “one of many important inputs into the process.” Other departments get to weigh in. Which ones? Well, almost all of them, it seems: Defense, Justice, Interior, Commerce, Transportation, Energy and Homeland Security, plus the Environmental Protection Agency. Those poor saps at Housing and Urban Development must feel like chopped liver.
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Ford probably did it because he was teaching them a brand new skill set from scratch and the higher worker retention offset the larger wage.
A higher Ford wage meant also (for a while) no union interference or presence in Ford factories.
Unions didn’t destroy the car factories until FDR’s control years later.
Ford was a pretty nasty anti-semite, so maybe he'd get along with this administration. ;~))
A lo-information president for the lo-information voters....who lap up his dumbed down drivel and alleged oratory. Reading someone elses words off a teleprompter
Ditto THAT!................
It may be an urban myth, but when I lived in Detroit the locals seemed to have bought it 110%.
Absolutely! And don't forget the added revenues those increased wages will bring into government coffers. A business requires X number of dollars to stay profitable, if you cut into those profits by mandated wage increases they have only two options to maintain profitability.
1. Increase prices, that is a limited option.
2. Decrease worker hours while simultaneously increasing employee workload.
bkmk
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