"He said in the first hundred days, he's going to let the big banks write their own rules — unchain Wall Street. They're going to put y'all back in chains." - Mighty Joe Biden correctly diagnosed the Paul Ryan and the Republican Party efforts to reintroduce Slavery to the US.Republicans were super mad at VP Biden during the run-up to the 2012 election because Mighty Joe never gave them the cover they've come to expect from Democrats. The Republican Party is wholly owned by the Plutocracy. As such they care only for what Corporations and the Super Rich want; and what they want is the elimination of the Middle Class, the institution of Wage Slavery and a Neo-Feudalist Corporate Controlled State in which workers are forever shackled in the chains of Corporate Bondage.
"The minimum wage makes no sense whatsoever to me,” former Reagan economist Art Laffer told Faux News host Jenna Lee. “Honestly it’s just the teenage — Black Teenage Unemployment Act. And this is the very group that we need to have jobs, not be put out of work because of a minimum wage. So, I’m very much in favor of getting rid of the minimum wage."
Art Laffer, is famous for popularizing a curve which purportedly showed a massive reduction in tax rates would create more tax wealth for government, and thus led to the creation of Piss Down Your Back and tell you it's Raining Reaganomics. Of course, the last 30+ years of Reaganomics in combination with other Ultra-Reactionary Right-Wing policies have utterly shattered the middle class, created an income inequality not seen since the Gilded Age and ended the belief in the American Dream; which it was designed to do.
Laffer, like most entitled rich white conservatives of his era, represents everything the Republican Party is supposedly against. Laffer spent the sixties attending Yale and Stanford (not in the military, probably because like Tom Delay too many minorities had signed up and taken his spot) and then spent the seventies teaching at Pepperdine and USC before joining Reagan's cabinet. So Laffer has never had a real job so he doesn't know how actual businesses operate.
Now, why would Laffer highlight Black Teenagers in his rant against the Minimum Wage? Because like all modern conservatives he's either a bigot or enjoys playing to the racists. Laffer is proposing that black teenagers work for whatever Business wants to pay with the wealth of their labor being siphoned off for their Owners
Laffer wants a return to the idyllic days of America's Founding in which Owners paid their workers nothing and massive wealth was accumulated. Because we would have 100% employment if we allowed Corporations to pay people nothing; which is exactly what Corporations want to do and what Republicans try to accomplish while in office.
Republicans want Slavery returned to America.
Republicans want Slavery returned to America.
6 comments:
As I point out on my own site, there is no free market when there are 150 million sellers and only a few hundred thousand buyers, there is an oligopsony where the buyers can drive down the price to basically $0.01/hour. When the price happens to be wages, you then run into the Iron Law of wages: People will not work for wages that are insufficient to sustain life. Either because they are dead, or because they are looking for something else that *will* sustain life, such as, say, selling crack on the streets or smashing in store windows to steal food.
One thing I will point out is that the current minimum wage is ALREADY below the Iron Law minimum. Things like food stamps and housing subsidies allow employers to pay below what they'd otherwise have to pay if there were in fact a free market by keeping people alive on wages that are insufficient to sustain life. And Laffer's suggestions are for even more blatant subsidies for employers, ignoring the fact that employers are not social welfare agencies and will not hire a single extra person at lower wages -- none, nada, zero. Because if they needed that extra person to meet demand for their product, they would have already hired him. And if they don't need that extra person, they'll never hire him, because that would hurt their profits.
In other words Laffer is a dishonest asshole looking for corporate welfare for his clients (Big Business). But we already knew that, didn't we?
- Badtux the Economics Penguin
It is time business pays the full cost of labor rather than having the people, through our taxes, subsidize them.
I usually notice the conservative double standard in effect. At the top of the income scale, CEOs, athletes, etc. you get what you pay for. More money supposedly equates to better performance, even though it demonstrably does not. Any suggestion of a pay cut for poor performance, or "sharing the wealth" with those below is met with shock and horror. And yet, at the bottom, income can always be squeezed lower without any detriment to behavior. Us domesticated darkies must know our place.
Laffer must be white and old, am I right? I think the country will have to "die" out of some of these problems. Until that mind-set has assumed room temperature, we will make little progress on solving our woes.
It's funny how they can hold two contradictory thoughts at the same time. Those at the top will work harder if we give them more money while those at the bottom won't want to work if we pay them too much, i.e. raise the minimum wage.
Badtux the economical astute penguin!
Jerry Critter, Correct as usual
Le Knight, yes we can't cut the pay for Wall Street thieves because we might lose the best and brightest, but you can't raise the minimum wage to attract better workers because...
yellow fringe, yes Laffer is of that Rove/Cheney Era of career politicians who have never been right about anything but are presumed smart because of white privilege.
Kulkuri, succinct and economically stated, I'm going to have to use your comment (with proper annotation of course) in the future.
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