Wednesday, April 06, 2016

The "Fight For $15" Is Not About Entry-Level Workers

by JASmius



It's about greedy Big Labor exploiting the classist greed of rank & file leftist drones, vocationally and economically consuming them like the political cannon fodder they are, in order to get what they're REALLY looking for: massively escalated wage rates in every higher level of the wage scale and the correspondingly upward-ratcheted dues and pension contributions that will go along with it.

And besides, all the classistly greedy rank & file lefist drones can always go (back) on the dole, right?:

Why shouldn’t we in fact accept job loss?” asks New School economics and urban policy professor David Howell, who’s about to publish a white paper on the subject. “What’s so bad about getting rid of crappy jobs, forcing employers to upgrade, and having a serious program to compensate anyone who is in the slightest way harmed by that?” [emphasis added]

Well, let's see; (1) skyrocketing unemployment, (2) way-above-market labor costs, and (3) business departures or failures.  Seems pretty bad to me.  But not to animals like "Professor" Howell, as that is their sought-after SJW objective.

Howell is talking about something like the Trade Adjustment Assistance program, which assists people who lose their jobs due to international trade deals. Sure, it might be harder to prove that your job was eliminated because of a minimum wage hike, or that a high minimum wage kept you from getting a job in the first place. But in principle, he says, the savings created by all the welfare benefits that won’t have to be doled out to people who are now making more money could be re-invested in vocational training, subsidized jobs, and direct income supports for those who can’t find work.

Welfare fund-shuffling, in other words.  And at a higher level of funding thanks to all the jobs destroyed by the obscene minimum wage hike, confiscated from those few of us who still HAVE jobs of any kind.  To be metaphorical about it, eventually, when you squeeze the turnip hard enough, there's no more blood, and all you end up with is a crushed turnip.

And I HATE turnips.

But the $15ers are on to the next pillaging pasture, preparing to export jobs, not out of cities or States, but out of the country entirely:

Another lesson, however, is that, when it comes to public policy, popular and wise are not necessarily the same. Stuck on $7.25 per hour since 2009, the federal minimum is due for an increase, especially in light of stagnant wages and income inequality. The magnitude of that increase, however, is a matter for caution, given the widely varying labor-market conditions across the country and the likelihood that sharp mandatory wage hikes would reduce the supply of jobs. Also, the minimum wage is not an especially well-targeted way to help the working poor, because — unlike the earned-income tax credit wage subsidy — it benefits many workers who are not poor, not supporting families, or both. [emphases added]

If, of course, they're not laid off or fired and thrown back on the dole from whence they came.  At the rate this craziness is going, there really isn't all that much of a difference.

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