Wednesday, January 10, 2007
< rant > The newly Dem. house continued its war on the poor by making it illegal to work for less than $7.25 an hour, to be phased in over a few years. In most parts of the county this will do little harm to most people because market wages are already there.
But there are places where the cost of living is low, the value of labor is low, and this bill will do real damage. Nationally, the impact will be hardest on teens, the elderly, native americans, especially native americans who identify as black, who come from cultures which don't fit well with high hourly wage employment. For example, I was just in hawaii, which has a "relax - dis ain't da mainland" atttitude, where some people would rather work less hard for less pay, than hustle for the man. However, wage rates there are high anyway. My 12 year old nephew makes more per hour as a videogame tutor than I made at my last job grading exams. The job I didn't get tonight would have paid $10/hr. Coming up, as an Aardvark-american, I had years of unemployment, disguised as a student, because I couldn't get my foot in the door and develop job skills over time. I have a doctorate,and I'm a pretty good dishwasher, but I can't weld or program or fix things, so finding employment is sometimes tough. The minimum wage hike will drive many jobs out of the country. I've misplaced that site that shows how someone making x per year stands in relation to other people in the world. My guess is that someone with a 40 hour job at $5.15/hr is in the upper half of world income, so the bill makes it illegal to be middle class. This war on the poor, by failing to look at the global economy, is racism of the sort that is typical of the Democratic party. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful reminds us that it's not how much you make that matters, it's how much you like your job. I had a job once at $5/hr, below the then minimum wage, because it gave me an excuse to hang out at the bar without having to buy drinks. At the Snow Lion, I made about $10/hr, but I wasn't there for the money; I wanted to see if I could learn anything from the newphew of his holiness. It wasn't vegetarian, so I couldn't stick with it, but it provided a nice social life that I missed later when I quit to start the law firm. < /rant > meanwhile, the war on jaywalking heats up. Ortega takes office, Arnold imposes socialized medicine, Bush opens third front by bombing Somalia, new cheap heart disease test, amniotic stem cells, slow news day. /. reports ebay will sell the $100 laptop for $200, so the kids get a free one. Brilliant!
But there are places where the cost of living is low, the value of labor is low, and this bill will do real damage. Nationally, the impact will be hardest on teens, the elderly, native americans, especially native americans who identify as black, who come from cultures which don't fit well with high hourly wage employment. For example, I was just in hawaii, which has a "relax - dis ain't da mainland" atttitude, where some people would rather work less hard for less pay, than hustle for the man. However, wage rates there are high anyway. My 12 year old nephew makes more per hour as a videogame tutor than I made at my last job grading exams. The job I didn't get tonight would have paid $10/hr. Coming up, as an Aardvark-american, I had years of unemployment, disguised as a student, because I couldn't get my foot in the door and develop job skills over time. I have a doctorate,and I'm a pretty good dishwasher, but I can't weld or program or fix things, so finding employment is sometimes tough. The minimum wage hike will drive many jobs out of the country. I've misplaced that site that shows how someone making x per year stands in relation to other people in the world. My guess is that someone with a 40 hour job at $5.15/hr is in the upper half of world income, so the bill makes it illegal to be middle class. This war on the poor, by failing to look at the global economy, is racism of the sort that is typical of the Democratic party. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful reminds us that it's not how much you make that matters, it's how much you like your job. I had a job once at $5/hr, below the then minimum wage, because it gave me an excuse to hang out at the bar without having to buy drinks. At the Snow Lion, I made about $10/hr, but I wasn't there for the money; I wanted to see if I could learn anything from the newphew of his holiness. It wasn't vegetarian, so I couldn't stick with it, but it provided a nice social life that I missed later when I quit to start the law firm. < /rant > meanwhile, the war on jaywalking heats up. Ortega takes office, Arnold imposes socialized medicine, Bush opens third front by bombing Somalia, new cheap heart disease test, amniotic stem cells, slow news day. /. reports ebay will sell the $100 laptop for $200, so the kids get a free one. Brilliant!
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