Republicans use their brains (at last)

From The Washington Post:

For years, organized labor has worked hard to raise the minimum wage, while business groups have campaigned to block such a change. This week in the Senate, however, the AFL-CIO is pushing to kill the wage increase while practically the entire business lobby is demanding that it pass.

The reversal is the product of election-year politics and clever -- critics say devious -- legislative packaging that has been dubbed the "trifecta." In the same bill, senators are being asked to raise the minimum wage (the liberals' goal), cut the estate tax (the conservatives' objective) and approve a laundry list of popular, though narrowly targeted, tax breaks.

[Snip]

Labor officials say that their opposition is a matter of economic and social justice. . .

"We don't think minimum-wage workers should have to wait for millionaires to get another tax cut before they receive a long-overdue pay increase," said Bill Samuel, the AFL-CIO's legislative director.

The death tax punishes people who have worked hard and built business (like family farms) and kept the business in the family. It also punishes people who have saved and invested and want to leave their wealth behind for their heirs to enjoy (not to mention the heirs).

As a percentage of the total income flowing into the federal treasure it is tiny. The loss of it would probably be more than offset by gains in other areas as people stopped sheltering their assets and started using them in ways that would cause their wealth to continue to grow for the next generation.

And what does organized labor care about the estate tax for anyway? They have a chance to get the minimum wage increase they claim that they want right here and right now. Why do they care if a small number of people get a tax break? Could it be that the AFL-CIO is in truth more of a left-liberal organization than it is a working man's organization?

That might explain why they support a minimum wage at all. After all the minimum wage harms those it is meant to help; an economic reality that is easy to document for anyone with any real understanding of economics.

The minimum wage is an entry level wage paid to people without much ability to create value for their employer. Most of the people drawing minimum wage are teens working their first job. Also there are elderly people looking to supplement their Social Security/retirement pensions and certain people whose circumstances make them high risk for employment. People such as ex-convicts and residents of halfway houses.

In all of these cases minimum wage employees will learn skills and prove themselves to be reliable (sometimes after first learning to be reliable) or they will not and be weeded out. Those who are left will have a demonstrated ability to create value for their employers and will be paid more.

To raise the minimum wage is to increase the cost of employing these unproven, unskilled and/or high risk workers. Hiking the minimum wage will reduce the employment opportunities for young black men in the inner city, people on parole or probation, teenagers looking for their first job, and retirees living on Social Security.

Ultimately a boost in the minimum wage will lead to more workplace automation and more outsourcing and more jobs moved off shore and less opportunity for people at the economic margins in American society.

This is just fine with Liberal elites because it means more people reduced to dependence upon the government. To a left-liberal the utopian future looks like an endless soup line with an ignorant, infantilized population utterly dependent upon their elite masters for food, housing and health care. The (little) money they have left over after taxes from their state subsidized jobs to be spent on recreation (mostly chemical) and on sporting events (two things which keep a population distracted and numb - in Oceania the only thing plentiful and cheap was "victory gin").

You know what? I don't care. The people hurt by an increase in the minimum wage are people who vote Democrat anyway so frak 'em. In exchange for the benefits of a lower death tax I am willing to see fast food restaurants automate burger flipping so that they don't need so many Bevis and Butthead types behind the counter.

This will help Republicans stay in control in Washington and will therefore push back the imposition of Sharia in the United States so it is as good trade.