Say Anything Blog

Looks like Nancy Pants carved out a special deal for her friends at Del Monte:

CNMI workers who now make $3.05 an hour may see their paycheck increase in two months, with Congress passing a federal wage hike bill that includes the Northern Marianas and American Samoa.

Under the Congress-passed version, the CNMI minimum wage would go up to $3.55 an hour 60 days after the bill is signed into law. Then, it would climb to $4.05 a year after the bill is enacted-or 10 months after the first increase.

The wage rate would continue to rise by 50 cents every year after that, hitting $7.05 in seven years. The final 20-cent increase, which would take place in 2015, would bring the local rate to the federal level of $7.25 an hour.

You remember that originally Nancy Pelosi tried to exempt her friends at Del Monte from having to pay a higher wage.  When that came to light she promised that she wouldn’t exempt them.

It looks like she’s managed to cut a deal to keep her buddies happy by delaying the payments ten years.  It seems to me that if the Democrats think that the minimum wage is good enough for the United States then they should bring American Samoan workers up to our level as soon as possible.

Of course even the Democrats aren’t so dumb as to realize that the minimum wage is bad economics, but it is good politics.  The problem in American Samoa is that they can’t cover up the effects and job losses.  So they delay it where it will show and pass it where the larger economy will mask much of the problems of the minimum wage.  When black teenagers can’t find a job, the Democrats will blame racism rather than accept the truth that the Congress has priced those with the lowest job skills out of the labor market.

A company isn’t going to hire someone when they don’t produce more than they earn.  That leads to less jobs for entry level people.  Of course the Democrats are ok with that because it’s all the more easier for them to exploit the poor unemployed people.

This is bad politics and bad laws all around.  The Democrats have been blocking funding for our troops at war for months and they finally only pass it in order to get the minimum wage passed.  What is the sense of that?

The bill is also full of twenty billion dollars of pork which is an outrage.  One item that I believe is in it is Kent Conrad’s “drought relief” for North Dakota farmers that he’s been after for almost a year.  The problem with that is that the crops in North Dakota were outstanding last year.  One of the versions of the bill from last year didn’t require a farmer to have had any losses from the drought, it was just a bonus because Kent Conrad was running for reelection.  Who wants to be that this outrageous spending is in this bill?

It seems that the Senate’s “tax breaks to offset the negative effects of the minimum wage on business” didn’t make the final bill.  That doesn’t bother me that much because when I read what was in those tax breaks it didn’t seem to me that they would help the businesses who are going to be hurt by the minimum wage one bit.  It looked to me like one more candy store giveaway to selected businesses.  How about we just cut business tax rates and quit fooling around picking winners and losers.

The bottom line is that the minimum wage hurts many of the workers it’s supposed to help.  The politicians know it but they just can’t stand to do the right thing.