Sunday, June 8, 2014

Hillary's $15.00 Per Hour Bribe For Votes


There's been a lot of ballyhoo recently about Seattle passing an ordinance demanding that all employers within the city limits pay a minimum wage of $15.00 per hour. Basically, what this is, is the kick-off to the Sea Hag's 2016 presidential campaign, just as Occupy Wall Street was the kickoff to Obama's 2012 re-election campaign and was shut down and absorbed into the Democratic party bureaucracy when it was of no further use.

First off: it is true that trying to support a family or get yourself out of crushing student loan debt on minimum wage while flipping burgers in Mickey D's is a terrible situation to be in. If the Republican party does not begin acknowledging these people's agony and doing something to alleviate it that one way or the other involves putting cash in their pockets and not the pockets of bankers, come November and come 2016 these wretched, suffering people are going to fall hook, line, and sinker for the Democrats' line of BS and run like lemmings to pull the D lever in the little booth. 

Republicans need to acknowledge how bitterly and tragically capitalism dropped the ball back in 2008. True, the actual depression came with Obama, but it began on George W. Bush's watch. True, the first crash was very largely the result of the sub-prime mortgage racket to offer blacks and browns "the pride of home ownership" and that began under the Clintons as one of their early attempts to bribe minorities for votes, but we need to do a hell of a better job explaining that to normal people who see only the wreckage. All we've got media-wise is Fox News and the internet and we'd better step up our game all around in that area.

Okay, getting back to the $15.00-per-hour law in Seattle, a few facts:

Mickey D's and KFC workers are not going to see a sudden magical rise in their paychecks. The law is incremental, and in any case will be impeded for some years by lawsuits filed by what remains of the Seattle business community in an attempt to save their livelihoods, as well as the fast food chains. So as far as producing any genuine amelioration of the living conditions of fast food workers, that's not happening any time soon.

If and when this law is upheld by the courts (a somewhat dubious proposition) then most small businesses will simply shut down and leave the city, and Seattle itself will become something of a ghost town. This isn't as bad as it sounds, because the law does not apply to Seattle suburbs such as Bellevue and Redmond and Kirkland, meaning that among other things Bill Gates' little private kingdom is not affected. God forbid Microsoft workers should have to pay $12.95 for their lunchtime Whoppers or $17.95 for a Happy Meal. Seattle Fourth Mealers who want something cheap and tasty by way of a dining experience instead of a yuppie fern bar or Little Miss Organic's Dinette will simply have to hop in their Priuses and roll across the 520 bridge to Bellevue

As always, in Amurrica perception is everything. The main purpose of this law is to make it look like the Democrats are doing something for the poor, downtrodden masses, whereas in fact the large corporations like McDonalds and Pizza Hut will skate or otherwise evade the requirement for $15.00 per hour and actual small businesses run by normal people will get it in the neck, since the Democrats don't want such small businesses to exist at all. 


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