What Are We Stimulating?
by Jeffrey Jena
I heard today that the eighteen million jobs that are supposed to be created by the Obama Over-Stimulating Bill are to be paid at union wage. It is a small detail. Apparently it was in the fine print that nobody had the time to read because if the bill wasn’t passed quickly global warming, excuse me, climate change was going to gobble up the middle class which would collapse the banking industry and lead to the collapse of the American car industry. Who wants to be stuck driving a Honda made in Tennessee that might run flawlessly for three or four hundred thousand miles when you could get a Buick that will probably be dead before you finish paying for it?
So now that these jobs have to be paid at union wage instead of prevailing wage we know two things. First, there won’t be as many jobs created as predicted. The Obama administration has revised the number down to 346. Second, we know how the AFL-CIO could afford the Fontainebleau for a week. So much for unions not getting any money from the bailout as we have heard so many leftists claim. While I’m on the subject of jobs … exactly how do you tell if you “saved” a job?” Is there an objective standard like when a pitcher saves a game in baseball or can the administration simply say that any job which didn’t disappear was saved? I can see the headline now in whatever dinosaur newspaper still exists in a year or two: “Obama Saves Thirty-Six Million Jobs.”
Doubtlessly, we will soon hear the squawking from the left about raising the minimum wage again. There is a whole army of soft headed folks in government and in the community organizing business who believe that if you squandered your educational opportunities, made bad life decisions and feel that having cable and an iPhone is more important than buying health insurance you should still live the easy life. Let the person who busted his backside starting a McDonalds pay you $83 an hour. They call it “living wage.”
Here is how the theory goes; if these greedy people who own businesses would pay more soon poverty would disappear. Of course so would the McDonalds but let’s not let that little fact get in the way of a good redistribution of wealth scheme. The McDonalds owner could just raise the price of the dollar menu to sixteen dollars and see what happens.
I know what happens. The guy who runs the garage and Jiffy Lube down the street comes by for lunch and has a cheeseburger and fries and pays the 32 dollars, so far so good. The next morning the newly un-poor burger flipper takes his car in for an oil change and what do you know an oil change is now four hundred dollars. Keep raising the minimum wage, you do it often enough it could work but I don’t think so.
It reminds me of the old joke about the guy who invests $100,000 in mutual funds and then gets cryogenically frozen for two hundred years. He gets warmed up and runs to the nearest Internet café orders a coffee and goes to his account online, his balance; 300 million dollars! Overjoyed that his plan has turned out so well he get up to pay and the clerk says, “Latte and ten minutes of Internet time, that’s six million.” Or as the punch line to one of my favorite hillbilly jokes goes, “We gotta get a bigger truck!”
Email this to a friend | Print |
Share on Facebook
| Tweet this
| 
Follow Us on Twitter
Subscribe via RSS
Got a Tip?
26 Comments
As to your comment: "Did I miss any of the clichés?", the answer is yes. There is that original concept from general motors of Engineered Obsolescence. Which is why I currently drive a Toyota that was made in Kentucky. BTW the Toyota Camry ranks at or near the top of the "Made in America" list. While the Pontiac GTO is made in Australia, as are other Pontiacs. So who is being bailed out?
As to that $83.00 per hour burger flipper at Mac's Steak House, what will that do to the Dollar Menu? Ad a zero to that and call it supersized.
Minimum wage goes up, prices go up…so minimum wage must go up again, which means prices go up again.
What gets forgotten is that raising the minimum wage increases costs on the business, which gets passed along in the form of higher prices…then the whole circle starts all over again.
I think they believe that the businesses will simply eat the costs of the higher wages. If that happens often enough, the owners will realize it costs too much and BOOM – they close. Then you have unemployed people, instead of minimum-wage-paid people.
One thing to add to Mr Jena's post that will no doubt enetertain you all- not only are all the 'stimulus' funds to be paid to Union only employees, state contracts now have to be re-bid because, well, they'll be more expensive… so, not only is this a reward for what brung him to the White House, it is @$350 million in inflated costs, meaning we all get less bang for our construction buck. You could have given 300,000 workers $24 an hour to stay home…
Happy now?
The secret is not in raising the minimum wage. If anything, I'd suggest lowering it. If people don't want to work a crap job, then they need to learn something. Learn a skill, any skill, and you'll get paid more. (The number of classifieds I've seen requesting experienced painters for over $15/hr…) McDonald's, like most corporations, probably has an education assistance program so its employees can learn something and be better employees, which will help them move up the ladder to bigger and better paying things.
I spent two years working at Kinko's. It was barely over minimum wage. I took computer programming courses at the local community college, and now I have a computer programming job that pays me 3.5 time more than Kinko's. I worked third shift, and I went to school during the day. It sucked out loud every minute of every day, but now I can afford food for my family.
As was said on another post-"It has not been tried and found wanting; it has been tried and found too difficult."
Do you morans know why you don't get to say how the funds are used? YOU LOST.
I really get a kick out of the fact that you can't spell one of the words you use all the time. Thanks for being a joke!
By the way, Jeff, the job numbers are all made up. There's not even any "real" math behind it. Basically you just name a number that you think people will accept. That's how they've done budgets for years.
Moreover, if you look at the assumptions in the Obudget, you'll know how silly these numbers are any way.
Nah, he just thinks we're Irish. Or bugs.
And we didn't lose. EVERYBODY lost. Should I add DFTT?
you have to admit it is pretty funny when the clueless enter this particular lions den of alpha conservatives, don't you?
At least it's a good day to be a moran…Happy St. Paddy's Day!
True, true.
yes, time to go fill my moran head with some Green beer.
Right back atcha! Although I'm of German descent, my ex was half-Irish (a Kernaghan). But I always celebrate the big day because I just look so damned good in green.
lets all pause and sing a song for O'bama http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/us_elec...
kinda reminds you of the clssic Stooges bit where Moe is wearing the button that reads 'AAM'
When asked, he says 'it means the Amalgamated Association of Morons- we are morons tried and true, and we'll do our call for you" at which time the three launch into verbal gibberish… kind of like that post.
I got to have an interesting discussion at a lunch today with a large group of my fellow science-folk. I apparently had the audacity to say that GM will never work with the current union situation. This highly educated PhD'd gentleman who makes less than a unionized autoworker was attempting to argue with me. By argue, I mean yelling about how if unions didn't exist there would be child labor and slavery. I'm kind of the low man on the totem pole and I just sat there and looked at him. It was a typical/wonderful liberal argument. Yell louder in a public place and bring up the tired old/inaccurate unions did some good things in the past, therefore they do things in the present argument.
Great Post.
Raising the minumum wage is a cruel way to devastate the poor while claiming to act on their behalf. It raises the prices of basic necessities at the same time that it makes entry-level jobs with few skill requrements–the kind the poor need to start up the ladder to economic independence–disappear. Oh, that Obama magic.
Need a new bumper sticker: '1-20-13' to anticipate the end of the Obama Regime.
Not completely germane: But I would like to take a moment to point out that while Obama has been very busy taking sucker punches at the Bush administration and his… inheritance. Bush never did that to Clinton and he is now refusing to make any comment about Obama's decisions or comments.
One thing under appreciated by the left is the importance of class. The Bushes have it in spades.
Good read, Jeffery!
Between President Obama and the usual suspects in Congress, it's like watching well-trained carnival barkers. While the media will portray the results of the Stimulus Plan as a veritable Christmas miracle, the people who have to live it every day will come to understand the truth. Nothing you get is free, unless you're Chris Dodd or Barney Franks. Or Charlie Rangel. I could go on…
http://the100mostannoyingthings.blogspot.com/
E-Verify was removed from the Socialus Bill, therefore many of the jobs created, and most saved, will go to illegal aliens, with no questions asked by the Obama-lama-ding-dongs. America will need a continental rape kit and years of post-traumatic stress therapy after this group is through with us.
Andrew, I always use made up numbers for two reason, 1) it's funny and 2) usually the number given by the government is already inflated or deflated
I'm sorry Jeff, I wrote that poorly. I mean the government's job numbers are always made up — no math, just a bunch of staffers picking a number out of thin air. I wasn't criticizing your numbers, which made the point quite nicely.
…Doubtlessly, we will soon hear the squawking from the left about raising the minimum wage again…
If I'm not mistaken, when the Democrats took over Congress two years ago, they immediately passed a 3-stage increase in the minimum wage, and the third stage is already set for this summer. If there was an actual conservative opposition existing in our government today, they would be making an issue of this. Raising the minimum wage in the middle of the greatest economic crisis in the history of human civilization is a pretty bad idea.
This crisis would have been a perfect time for conservatives to stand up and say, "Ok..if things as bad as BHO says, we are for stimulus, but we must cut through all the crap: The stimulus spending should be exempt from all affirmative action and prevailing wage laws and should be targeted at a simple concept. Get the most from this spending. Open bidding, low contract wins. period." Unfortunately, Emmauel's "never fail to exploit a crisis" mentality is beyond the reasoning of the current crop of big government republicans.
http://www.alistz.net
I found this site from Andrew hosting the Dennis Miller show. Some really interesting and thought provoking ideas here.
I'd like to see some of you posting over at http://www.topix.net in the 'US' and 'Politics' threads. There you'll find true disciples of the Left.
You must be logged in to post a comment.