Minimum Wage = Bureaucracy = Disaster
Bush, by any measure, has completely dropped the ball on this recovery but he’s finally doing what leaders are supposed to do; make tough decisions.
People of all political stripes without a firm grasp on economics see minimum wage as a good thing, which explains the near universal outrage at Bush’s decision to suspend the minimum wage in areas affected by Katrina. Bush is aware that most people don’t get it. He knows that to the uninformed this appears to be kicking those who are down. He still deserves a mountain of criticism but not for this.
Here’s a quote from a hospital worker expressing her frustration with bureaucracy:
“We were forbidden to allow patients to work unless they were paid Federal Minimum Wage and of course, there was no money in the budget for that.”
It’s ridiculous that people who criticize the federal government for its lack of efficiency are calling for more bureaucracy in the form of minimum wage. But this common hypocracy knows no party affiliation, many believe that it’s impossible for biological order to emerge spontaneously (intelligent design) yet whole-heartedly align with the economic principles of the Hayek and Smith.
I agree that we should be helping these people any way we can with cash. Direct deposits or bank cards will do. Why on earth we would want to impose bureaucracy on businesses trying to rebuild is simply baffling to me.
EDIT: CNN has a video story on the move by Bush calling it “more hurt for the poorest of the poor”. What happened to objective reporting? It’s frustrating watching a major news outlet subtly imposing its political will on the minds of unsuspecting viewers. In a feeble attempt to maintain some semblance of objectivity they preface their spin with a “critics say” which is becoming nearly as common as “but first…”.
Related posts:
Saw your post on HuffPo in response to Kathleen Reardon’s essay. I’m not sure if you have the same idea I do which is to try and steer mostly disaffected liberals away from more of the same as opposed to just “Bush is bad, get rid of him and everything will be ok.” In any case, I’m also a believer in Hayek and Rothbard and that philosophy…I read a lot of the stuff on Lew Rockwell’s site. However, I’m often concerned that libertarians also suffer from some of the very same disconnects that Ms Reardon speaks about. I regard encouraging the journey from “the government should be my dad” to the understanding that it never can be as a long, delicate one. Many libertarians seem to think that since their ideas are so obviously right that they don’t need to display any sensitivity to generations of public education programming that has provided us with the electorate we have today. They often just state their philosophy in blunt, take-it-or-leave-it terms and tend to leave the impression that we’re even more heartless than traditional conservatives. My intention is to try and meet these people where they really are and gently show them that compassion and small government are not only compatible but the only possible way to get where we’d all like to be.
Best of luck.
Comment by nextvoice — September 11, 2005 @