Tyranny #3 - Minimum wage isn't about economics - it's about "Community", dontcha know? - Granite Grok

Tyranny #3 – Minimum wage isn’t about economics – it’s about “Community”, dontcha know?

All one community…

Of all the reasons to raise a minimum wage (leaving aside for the moment, the utter crassness of know-it-all politicians who believe they know what’s best for the health of a company, especially a small biz in this economy, than the owners do), this has GOT to be one of the stupidest:

CONCORD – The state’s business community, large and small, turned out in force Tuesday to attack two bills that would raise the minimum wage while allies with organized labor and anti-poverty programs said reinstating a state minimum and raising it above the federal standard would have an economic stimulus effect.

Both Rep. Peter Sullivan, D-Manchester, and Rep. Timothy Robertson, D-Durham, said the new Legislature should undo the work of the last one, which got rid of a state minimum wage that had been on the books since 1949.

Sure, why not – they are actively working to undo everything that the Republican supermajorities did last session.  Hey, monkey-DC, monkey-Concord as far as the Democrats are concerned.  Is this now the “new normal” – whip sawing the State simply “we’re not Republicans”?  Instead of governing well (which used to mean “do the least harm, or even better, emulating Cal Coolidge), do the Dems really want to descend to tit-for-tat eternally?  Or, again as what is happening in DC led by Obama, trying hard to erase the GOP?  Either way, that is not governance, that is elementary school playground.

If that was first, this is second – and worst from another perspective:

We are all one community and raising this wage, in my view, is the way we show it,’’ said Robertson whose bill (HB 241) would raise the minimum wage by $2 an hour to $9.25. The current federal minimum wage is $7.25.

Sullivan’s bill (HB 127) would jump it to $8 hourly.

Look, I don’t believe in a minimum wage – the owner of a small biz generally has a small window of opportunity to hire someone financially (I know, been there, took money out of my pocket to make payroll when it came due when the biz didn’t have it).  I resented it then (even as I paid higher) and I resent it now – how can some far away politician or bureaucrat determine how much a person is worth to MY biz?  Oh sure, in the aggregate, to be sure, spread across all businesses of a given type across the country.  But then again, it wasn’t THEIR bucks on the line – it was mine and my family’s And my situation was not anyone else’s.

I also am old enough to remember driving into a gas station with either Mom or Dad.  No, they didn’t get out and whip out the card and put it into the pump.  Instead, one high-school kid ran to wipe down the front windshield and back glass, another ran to check the tire pressure, another checked the oil and windshield wiper fluid levels – and one guy in his twenties or thirties took the card inside to office to run a phone call on.  So, where are they now?  Where are the flock of young bell-hops at a hotel, or the usher at the movie theater, or the bag boy at the grocery store that took them out to your car for you…and more.  Where are these jobs?

Minimum wage killed them off.  When you raise the cost of labor beyond the return on that very real expense, the job goes away.  EVERY owner owns the job – but with this, the State defines that they do (its what Progressives believe – you didn’t build that biz!).  The expectation that every owner or manager has is that every employee helps to create a profit – I have done that for each employer I have worked for and I expected that of mine.  If you are not making a profit, the job goes away.  Ask yourself, why do you now “pour” your own drink at a fast food restaurant , or stand in line to give the cashier your order?  Simple – YOU are now providing the labor to the fast food restaurant owner because to hire wait staff would make their menu prices make to too expensive for that niche (albeit, large) offering.  You now provide the labor to the gas station owner via pumping your own gas and paying with a card because it is too expensive to have all those entry level kids swarming around prepping your car.

Progressives have decreed that Government (by creating this “keep entry level person unemployed” monstronsity) should make all those jobs are no longer worthwhile – even as unemployment for kids and young adults is at a high water mark.  They have lost sight that entry level jobs are STARTING points – and not an end point.  Sorry, but if you have always been in an entry level job simply because you haven’t upped your skill level, well, that goes to the next point.  Entry level jobs are not meant to support families on – they are meant to train people to move up.

““We are all one community and raising this wage, in my view, is the way we show it?”  Really? This is nonsense at the same level of Democrats proclaiming that Patriotism is simply paying higher taxes.  Economically, a minimum wage is a governmental tax imposed upon a community for no good reason than some politician’s “bright” idea).  Here we see the Democrats “enforced community” – the notion that simply because you live in an area, you HAVE to belong “them”.

This is yet another subtle way to destroy the philosophy of the rugged individualism that actually built this country to be the greatest and most powerful in history. What happens if Individualism (anathema to these “enforced communitarians) goes away as a mainstay of American life, if self-reliance is , there is little left of the Constitution.
Yes, community IS important, but it is CIVIL Society that is the important definition “community” – that of VOLUNTARY associations like churches, charitable  organizations of all types, service groups, ad hoc groups, clubs of all kinds,  neighbors, friends, and extended families.

What we see now is Progressives using Government to crowd out all these “informal” groups.  Completely opposite to to the Progressive end game, the Founders understood that it was a limited Government with a large Civil Society was the best protection against a tyrannical government growing up on these shores.  There was a reason why Civil Society was branded to be that buffer between Individuals and Government – not only was did serve to service most needs of individuals, it could react faster than a slothful government bureaucracy ever could.  It fosters nimbleness and best of all – VOLUNTARY associations.  See a need?  Go fill it yourself.  Too big to tackle on your own?  Grab some friends or PERSUADE strangers to help out.  When done, disband.

Progressive “community” means Government encirclement, permanent costs, and INvoluntary participation.  No, you may not actually help in the work, but trust me – you will pay for it in taxes.  And thus, ask the simple question – and how does the ordinary person pay their taxes?  They work – they trade their time and skill for money.  And what is a tax?  At its simplest, it is still taking your time, your labor, for a purpose that you may have never wanted to participate (e.g., I have no motivation to pay for “needle swaps” for druggies nor for studies of the drinking habits of Chinese ladies of the night).  But since Progressives have decided that ALL have to be “saved” and be made to “progress” towards “perfection” and their Utopia of a Progressive Heaven on Earth, EVERYone must be included (i.e., ““We are all one community“).

Unlike the model of Civil Society, where involvement is voluntary, Progressive Government is “the one thing we all belong to”- and they DO mean ALL of us.

Dunno about you, but I’m not grooving to the idea, as a Conservative, that I belong to Government – it is the antithesis of how this country came to be.

Go ahead, ask a Progressive like these two economic chuckleheads – where has Progressivism EVER created such success?  Remember, we can certainly point out where they have failed (or are failing) each and every time.

Go ahead, ask a Progressive like these two economic chuckleheads (and those like out-of-state-transplant-Propagandist Zandra Rice-Hawkins) – how does their end game differ at all, for the ordinary person, than being ruled by an unaccountable King?  Their veneer of “democracy” resembles that of a Marxist sleight of hand than not.

Remember, democracy is not an end point – it was felt best to protect all of our Rights laid out in the Declaration, Constitution, and Bill of Rights.  But we now see it being co-opted, along with our language, and an incremental switch-out of our Judeo-Christian morality and philosophy for a Marxist based Political Correctness based on relativism.

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