 |
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
|
|
| | Email this article • Print this article | Adding to minimum wage may be real job killer in this economy
GOP gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer planted his foot squarely in his mouth and took a subsequent media beating over his remarks about restaurant servers making too much on tips. The restaurant owners should be exempted from minimum wage laws and be able to pay their workers less in salary because they make too much in tips, Emmer claimed.
His DFL gubernatorial rival Margaret Kelliher-Anderson was equally out of touch when she proposed the minimum wage should be increased by $1.50 an hour to help these servers make a better living.
Where have these two been lately? Apparently Emmer does not hang around with people who make minimum wages (like bar and restaurant servers). Try to survive on those salaries (and tips).
And Anderson apparently does not hang around with small business people trying to stay afloat in these tough economic times.
Emmer has a habit of shooting from the lip with his passionate conservative message before the potential fallout from his comments are determined.
While we tend to agree with the basics of Emmer's message - cut state spending, create new jobs, make the state more business-friendly - his fire-brand, take-no-prisoners approach is causing more head shaking than wooing of undecided voters.
Kelliher-Anderson, on the other hand, has rolled out her thread-bare liberal rhetoric - forget spending cuts, generate more revenue, preferably through more state taxes. Forget it!
Kelliher-Anderson's plan to increase the minimum wage, which is a classic liberal theory of redistributing the wealth (socialism, and might as well throw Mark Dayton's tax-the-rich plan in as well), is totally out of touch with reality.
Adding another $1.50 an hour to the current minimum wage will not have the desired effect, rather the opposite will happen.
Instead of improving the lot of minimum-wage workers, it will put many more out of jobs. Businesses will have to make cuts if such mandates become law.
Some economic experts predict the current recession will not end until more, good-paying jobs are created. That is more likely to happen in small- to medium-sized businesses and industries than with the industrial giants of the world.
Even if the "big boys" create more jobs, the chances of them being outsourced to other parts of the world are great. U.S. labor costs are already considered too high, and that puts us at a decided disadvantage.
But American businesses and industrial leaders need to wake up; exporting manufacturing jobs will ultimately bring this country to its knees by eliminating the working, blue collar middle class.
Small businesses around this country will be a savior of this economy, not big industry. Adding more burdens to those small businesses, especially now, is simply foolish. It will kill any potential job growth.
Hopefully, Emmer and Kelliher-Anderson get realistic and move closer toward the middle of the political spectrum where the majority of us reside and quit pandering to their small, but vocal, voter bases.
Whoever wins the middle will win the election. It looks like Tom Horner, and his rival Rob Hahn, of the Independence Party realize this and have been aiming their message toward voters looking for someone who will find solutions, not kill initiatives.
Beware in November. This election could be ripe for a third-party coup.
- R.G.
|
Article Comment Submission Form
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
