America Takes A Pay Cut
Red Planet Cartoons
Red Planet Cartoons takes a look at the increase in minimum wage in their latest.
From The Wall Street Journal: Bad Law, Worse Timing.
Most are not family heads making the minimum wage full-time all year. They are young single adults, teenagers living at home or spouses providing a second income. The average family income of a minimum-wage earner is $44,636, and 42% of these workers live with a parent or other relative. Only 15% of employees making the minimum wage are single earners with dependents. “A minimum wage increase today is a middle-class family entitlement,” says EPI Executive Director Rick Berman, “because that’s who’s working at the minimum wage in second and third jobs.”
Repeated studies have shown that minimum-wage increases are more likely to slow job creation than reduce poverty. A large share of the costs of these mandates are borne by the same low-income families the wage hike is supposed to help. Employers inevitably pass wage increases onto consumers as higher prices for goods and services, which erodes the spending power of all consumers but especially the poor. Employers also respond by hiring fewer unskilled workers, a disproportionate number of whom are teenagers and minorities.
Why would politicians vote for a minimum wage increase when it's been demonstrated, time-and-again that it hurts the very people it's supposed to help?
It's the ultimate liberal politician's wet dream.
It allows the liberal to proclaim that (s)he's helping the poor. It also fulfills the political need of "doing something"--whether that "something" is beneficial or not. Finally, it allows the liberal to feel good about themselves for being such a fine, outstanding person.
The facts be damned.
As a personal note: eons ago, while managing a fast food restaurant, the minimum wage was increased. That raised labor costs as well. Labor costs at our store were fixed as a percentage of sales the store did. The usual amount of money we had to work with for labor costs at that time, was roughly (if memory serves), $280 per week.
Though the minimum wage went up, the budget for labor costs did not. If the labor costs budget increased, then our prices had to increase, also. The upshot: we had to let one of our eight workers go and cut the hours of two others.
That is the real-life consequences of a rise in the minimum wage.
Red Planet also includes supporting links, for reference and convenience.
Raising the minimum wage: who does it really help?
Ask the politicians.
by Mondoreb
Source: America Takes a Pay Cut
Life Outside the Beltway
Washington elites, pontificating pundits and media types would be very surprised to know: There is life outside the beltway. Millions of largely invisible, average Americans live there. And these Americans are living lives totally alien to the thousands of so-called experts and talking heads who claim to represent them.
For instance: These Americans, (I'll call them 'we' Americans, as I belong to their ranks), aren't waiting breathlessly for the latest word on high from Hillary. We really don't care what she says, having learned long ago that much of what comes out of her mouth is designed for political expediency, not conveying truths.
We're also not marveling over the new media messiah, Obama. We've been around awhile and we know what all the experts don't, namely, that a 15 minute flash in the pan does not a president make. As far as we're concerned, the job of running this, the greatest country in the world, requires more than being able to give a good speech. And even though some of us wear checkered shirts and have been known to drink beer on occasion doesn't mean we don't know the difference between socialism and capitalism.
Instead of spending all our time dissecting the nuance and context of the latest sound bite du jour, we have better things to do. Like earning a living, spending time with family or just plain having fun.
We have lives that are not dependant on political fortunes or government largesse. We live in the real world. A world, unlike the inside of the D.C. beltway, where hard work and merit are appreciated and rewarded. A world where a man's word is still his bond and Christian values still mean something. A world where acquiring power and money mean less than earning an honest living and the respect of our neighbors.
The latest polls mean less than zero to us. We know that in politics, 24 hours can be a lifetime and there are many lifetimes to go before we cast our votes in November.
We 'invisible' Americans know when we're being patronized and we have enough common sense to take with a grain of salt any pronouncements claiming to be 'for our own good.' We know best how to run our lives, not some yahoo who's only accomplishment was fooling enough of the populace to get elected to a position of political power.
To most of us in flyover country, political correctness is the hallmark of a herd animal - one who follows the group and lets others do his thinking for him. One who is more concerned with group status than doing what he thinks is right. You know who I mean: the guys and gals that appear on TV, gravely giving us peons the benefit of their vast knowledge. The ones who claim the 'truth' is relative yet insist that their version is the only acceptable truth.
The difference between those that inhabit the rarified real-estate inside-the-beltway and us average Americans is, we are held accountable for the decisions we make. And when we endorse or promote a cause or an idea, we do it with our own money, not the taxpayers'. And we do it quietly, for the right reasons, knowing that the virtue is in the doing, not the talking about it.
Here in the heartland, we all practice capitalism without shame and we don't apologize for making a profit. A lot of us still lower our voices to a whisper when discussing race, but we're working on that.
Words still have meanings and we know that relabelling a donkey as a princess doesn't make that ass a princess. We know a rose is still a rose, even if a self-annointed expert says it isn't. We really don't need or want all the inside-the-beltway experts telling us how to raise our own kids, what kind of car to buy, or how to celebrate diversity.
Mostly, we'd just like to be left alone by all the do-gooders who's main talents are manufacturing crisis' in order to save us from them. We'd sure appreciate it if you'd limit your mischief making to inside the beltway and leave us all alone. We can live our lives just fine without your help.
by Nancy Morgan
Nancy Morgan is a columnist and a news editor for RightBias.com
She lives in South Carolina, where she writes "Culture Watch" weekly.
Article may be reprinted with attribution. Bio available on request.
images:
* fabricspray.com
* myslewski
HUGE Oil Field in Montana is Good News for Consumers
--Which Makes it Unpalatable for the Mainstream Media
While Jeroen van der Veer, Shell’s chief executive, fears for the future of oil supplies after 2015--maybe he's confusing Shell's oil supply with the rest of the world's--Newsmax has just released information on the HUGE oil discovery in Montana: the Williston Basin or "Bakken" field.
About 470 miles outside the state capitol of Helena - in a place called Richland County, Montana - more millionaires are being created per capita than anywhere else in America.
It's the largest domestic oil discovery since Alaska's Prudhoe Bay and has the potential to eliminate all American dependence on foreign oil.
The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates it at 503 billion barrels. Even if just 10% of the oil is recoverable... at $107 a barrel, Montana is looking at a resource base worth more than $5.3 trillion.
* "When I first briefed legislators on this, you could practically see their jaws hit the floor. They had no idea." says Terry Johnson, the Montana Legislature's financial analyst.
* "This sizeable find is now the highest-producing onshore oil field found in the past 56 years," reports The Pittsburgh Post Gazette.
It's a formation known as the Williston Basin, but is more commonly referred to as the "Bakken." And it stretches from Northern Montana, through North Dakota and into Canada.
For years, U.S. oil exploration has been considered a dead end. Even the "Big Oil" companies gave up searching for major oil wells decades ago. However, a recent technological breakthrough has opened up the Bakken's massive reserves... and we now have access of up to 500 billion barrels.
And because this is light, sweet oil, those billions of barrels will cost Americans just $16 PER BARREL!
That's enough crude to fully fuel the American economy for 41 years straight.
As one can see from the map below, before the 'Bakken' discovery, the U.S. was still a major oil producer--it is just a major consumer, also.
The relative MSM coverage of the 'Bakken' find is another example of the topsy-turvy media reporting to which the USA--and most of the rest of the world--has grown accustomed.
Politicians, most of who have seldom been involved in anything economically-productive, are looked to as providing answers to complex questions. As Thomas Sowell has said:
Let's face it. Supply and demand will never replace "need" and "greed" in political discussions of economic issues.
Talking about the "need" for more affordable housing or more affordable medical care is what will get politicians more votes this election year.
Voters don't want to hear about impersonal things like supply and demand. They want to hear about how their political heroes will stop the villains from "gouging" them or "exploiting" them with high prices.
Moral melodrama is where it's at, politically.
Moral melodrama, indeed.
Politicians in general--and Democrats, in particular--find little that is "sexy" in talking about supply and demand. How much easier to switch the subject: to "Big Oil Villains".
It has always been thus: politicians TALK about hard questions, hard problems and hard solutions, while their ACTIONS scream "easy". We've come to expect this: their desk plaques might read "Senator" and "Congressman" when you see them on C-SPAN, but for most, a simple "Politician" label would be more accurate.
Careful followers of the economic debates that occupy today's politicians understand this and sigh. But it's seemingly above the heads of most MSM reporters, Bill O'Reilly and Democrat Congressional members.
The 'Bakken' field is economic good news for the U.S.A. and for American consumers.
That's reason enough to provoke little excitement among the Mainstream Media and campaigning politicians.
by Mondoreb
Sources:
* Shell chief fears oil shortage in seven years
* Too "Complex"?: Part II
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