Monday, February 28, 2005

Don't Mess With My Value Menu!

Time to wax political. What the hell are they thinking by raising the minimum wage? The biggest concern that they mention is that one can't raise a family on a minimum wage job. Helloooo! You should be looking for a better job than that if you are about to raise a family or already have one to support! If you have to, use that job as a short term solution as you search for the right one. The best thing I heard from someone on the subject was, "Let's raise it to $20 an hour." Of course you would say, "Hell yeah! That means I'm getting a raise." But if you were making $19 an hour which isn't the minimum... you get a raise too and you'd complain about being paid minimum wage. We would all work for the same basic pay and we all would pay more for our items on McDonald's 99 cent menu while less of their workers are running around trying to get you your food before it's cold. You have to cut costs somewhere and initially it falls on staffing and benefits. I've also heard that right now people are making more on welfare than at minimum wage jobs. That's a great way to encourage people to work. Let's pay people more to not work than work... I think they call that government subsidizing. Getting caught in the numbers crunch, we've decided to just make employers pay more instead of lowering what we are paying people to not work. I can't say I'm against there being a bare minimum that someone can be paid for a job. We need entry level jobs. But we shouldn't be calling those jobs careers. Most people complain about "big business" putting "Mom and Pop" stores out of business but who do you think is better suited to survive a wage hike?

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