Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF): The debate over the $15/hour minimum wage seems intended to make more people dependent on the government, not less.
Thanks to the invention of the worldwide web of everything, and the social media tools invented to let us share cat pictures, become social influencers, and YouTube stars we are now able to share our deepest emotions and opinions with anyone who will view the videos, or read the writings. This is just such a thing. I post my opinions to a blog, share them on social media and it is read by a couple of dozen people.
A byproduct of these things is some of the shallowest thinkers now believe their own press and think their emotional appeals will carry the day. We see that from such Hollywood heavyweights as Rob “Meathead” Reiner who spent the last four years of his life focused on condemning the very existence of Donald Trump on Twitter® or Alyssa “Who’s the Boss” Milano, who like Rob spent the last four years condemning Trump, and advocating for the #MeToo thing, as long the men were Republicans or disgraced Hollywood producers. She didn’t seem to care too much if they were Democratic politicians, but then she must have seen some kind of moral difference.
To an extent though these, emotion-driven, Twitter® tirades served their purpose. The nation now has a new President. He may be really old, apparently senile, and a career politician with almost 50 years of non-accomplishment, but he will carry the nation forward with increased energy costs, increased debt, and support for the most radical aspects of social evolution, at least until they can get Kamala Harris installed to replace him.
Forgive me, but this is a long way to get to the subject of emotions versus reality.
I’d like to talk about the emotional appeals from the left to raise the minimum wage for the unskilled labor force. A group of people who make up a significant portion of the service industry. For those who may not be familiar with what the service industry is, it is made up of the restaurants you can’t eat in if your state is governed by Democrats, it also has “fast food” places like Micky D’s, Burger King, and Taco Bell et.al. The retail stores we find in the malls, and shopping centers, the gas stations where you pump your own gas, except in New Jersey where according to the State, it is unsafe for you to do that and an unskilled worker is hired (at presumably minimum wage), and finally, it includes all the entertainment establishments where you go to unwind after a hard day of self-isolating.
People who fill these unskilled labor positions mostly come from those who didn’t think high school was all that important, or some of the more advanced social “studies” programs in liberal arts colleges who are having a hard time translating a Bachelor of Arts in Italian Medieval Art Collections of the 14th Century into a high paying executive job with a Fortune 500 company. Of course, there are also the “soon-to-be” superstar singers and actors who are waiting tables until they are discovered and thrust upon the nation as the next great thing.
The thing about these “unskilled” jobs is soon all the unemployed coal miners who were told they should learn to code will be writing the code to teach a machine to do every one of them. Heck, we already see that in the self-checkout lines and self-ordering machines popping up all around the country. Several years ago my neighbor, who manages a Styrofoam cooler manufacturing facility shared a conversation he had with the multi-millionaire owner. My neighbor wanted to invest in a new machine and was concerned about the cost. The machine took fewer humans to operate, had better reliability than the old machine, and would pay for itself in reduced costs in a few years. His owner approved the purchase and also said, anytime you can replace an employee with a machine it was a good decision because machines don’t complain or need days off.
Look around, we are in the digital age. The big manufacturing companies have gone to robots everywhere they can. As the United Auto Workers Union fights for new wage increases has the membership grown since the 1970s? The answer is a simple no. It reached its peak in 1979[1] with 1.5 million members, today it has about 391,000 active members and 580,000 retired.[2] The only question is how long will the retirement funds hold out for those members?
So as the Democratic party, and its voters, argue for this wage as the new minimum should we assume they are all blind to the economic reality they would create, or is there some other reason? Are the billionaire supporters of the plan going to all the sudden change their business models or will they just lay off people to ensure their profits? As I look around it seems to me companies like Amazon® are already positioning to automate their workforce future and cast aside those unfortunate individuals who don’t have the technical skills to adapt. Of course, the caring Democratic party will pick up the cost of sustaining these unfortunate victims with the expanded welfare programs they will put in place. They will become wards of the state and the state will rob them of their dignity.
As people are paid this new minimum will the quality of their lives go up? Perhaps for a brief time, but as we’ve seen with every other minimum we’ve set -- inflation will inevitably catch up and they will be right back struggling to survive, although with each rise there will be fewer and fewer entry positions to enter and grow out of, so at the end of the day the transition from unskilled to skilled laborer become more restrictive. I wonder, what groups benefit most from this new reality. I doubt it is poor and uneducated the DNC promises to help each day. Is it?
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