As we head into Labor Day, I believe it's way past time for somebody with a microphone to ask these bozos in the Tea Party if they even believe in the minimum wage, don't you?
Whaa, whaa, whaa, all we keep hearing is how THEY WANT THEIR COUNTRY BACK! Well, guys and gals, enquiring minds want to know, back to when? Back to where?
Let's get personal people! What could be more attention-getting to every family in America? What would these teabaggers, libertarians and radical republicans actually do if they got the power they're screaming for? And how would that affect your family?
A few days ago, as I listened to an interview on NPR about the Koch Brothers, I realized these guys mean business! They fully intend to take us back a century!
And what a wonderful world that would be! There are so many branches of Libertarianism that it's hard to pin down in a nutshell exactly what they all believe. Which for us is a good thing. They don't seem unified at all. But they are unified on one thing now...the destruction of the Democratic Party and the American way of life as we now know it in the year 2010.
So, we have a right to ask our fellow countrymen and women who call themselves Libertarians: What the hell would this wonderful world look like? Please share your vision for the public school system, social security, medicare, environmental protection, food safety, worker safety, mine safety, unions, minimum wage, abortion, civil rights, health care reform, equal pay, etc. etc. etc. Oh, so many questions, so little chance of getting any substantive answers!
But the minimum wage issue is one that I think can get the attention of Americans everywhere. Right or left, you're pissed that your wages haven't gone up for a long, long, time. But now some of these morons might actually be against even a minimum wage? It's a picture that tells a thousand words. A pure, solid gold picture.
Just how far would those philanthropic Koch Brothers, lovers of the arts and heroes to the New York Art Scene, actually take us back? Would any working person in American even be able to afford the Opera after they're done with us? Let's force them to draw a line in the sand, shall we?
In researching the minimum wage, I came across a few interesting tidbits. According to Wiki:
Minimum wages were first proposed as a way to control the proliferation of sweat shops in manufacturing industries. The sweat shops employed large numbers of women and young workers, paying them what were considered to be substandard wages.
Ooooh, child labor laws. I wonder what libertarians think of that?
In 1852, Massachusetts required children to attend school. In 1853, Charles Loring Brace founded the Children's Aid Society, which worked hard to take in children living on the street. The following year, the children were placed on a train headed for the West, where they were adopted, and often given work. By the late 1800s, the orphan train had stopped running altogether, but its principles lived on.
Yeah, given work. I heard about that orphan train. I'm sure the work was loving and child-appropriate and I just will not allow my beautiful mind to go to dark places.
In 1914 the Arkansas state Federation of Labor placed a child welfare initiative on the ballot prohibiting child labor, which the voters passed.
The National Child Labor Committee, an organization dedicated to the abolition of all child labor, was formed in 1904. It managed to pass one law, which was struck down by the Supreme Court two years later for violating a child's right to contract his work. In 1924, Congress attempted to pass a constitutional amendment that would authorize a national child labor law. This measure was blocked, and the bill was eventually dropped. It took the Great Depression to end child labor nationwide; adults had become so desperate for jobs that they would work for the same wage as children. In 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which, among other things, placed limits on many forms of child labor.
Did ya hear that? The supreme court blocked it. For violating a child's right to contract his work. Let that one sink in because I'm not so sure some on our very own SCOTUS would do any different.
Meanwhile, back at the CATO Institute, read it and weep:
http://www.cato.org/...
Communism may be dead, but socialism is alive in the many forms of government intervention we see daily in the marketplace.
One widely accepted policy — the minimum wage — is appropriately reflected in Karl Marx's dictum, "To each according to his needs, from each according to his ability."
The idea that legislators can help low-income workers simply by mandating a pay raise is the height of hubris. While the minimum-wage rhetoric may sound good, the reality is quite different. Forcing employers to pay low-skilled workers a higher than market wage — in the absence of any changes in productivity — will decrease the number of workers hired (the law of demand).
In fact, many entry-level jobs actually pay more than $5.15 or even $6.15 per hour, so the idea that without the minimum wage, workers would be exploited is a myth. In competitive markets, such as fast food and retailing, employers who pay below-market wages will not be able to attract sufficient help. McDonald's is paying up to $8 per hour in Panama City, Fla., for example.
It would be much wiser to let workers and employers freely negotiate wages than to enact a minimum wage law that interferes with freedom of contract and prevents low-skilled workers from gaining the experience and work ethic necessary to achieve higher living standards.
We want to be just like you Hong Kong!...
Increasing the minimum wage may give "liberal" legislators great pride and win them votes, but it does not address the key issue of how to achieve economic growth and thus reduce poverty. Hong Kong has no minimum wage but is one of the most prosperous economies in the world — because it is also the freest.
And, drumroll....
Economic freedom, not minimum-wage socialism, is the key to reducing poverty, as China is learning. If legislators really want to help the poor, the best thing they can do is abolish, not increase, the minimum wage.
Harry Reid, Jack Conway, and any other Dems running against a Teabagger/Libertarian this November, grab a microphone and please ask your opponent...where do you stand on the minimum wage? From there it shouldn't be too difficult...even for the democratic party...to draw a dismal picture for Americans if these sociopaths ever got their way. Let's ask the Baggers what they think about leaving their grandchildren a world without minimum wage and child labor laws, shall we?