New Jersey Democrats are flexing their more progressive muscles. The party is making two important progressive goals their top priorities — an increased minimum wage and marriage equality.
Sheila Oliver, the Assembly speaker, announced today that bumping the minimum wage to $8.50 from $7.25 an hour would be a top priority of the Assembly legislative session that starts tomorrow. She called it an “economic stimulus that doesn’t come in the form of more debt or increased spending” and “is a recognition that thousands of households in New Jersey are struggling to subsist on minimum wage jobs that do not allow them to support their families.”
The speaker’s announcement, which was endorsed by the liberal think tank, New Jersey Policy Perspective, came on the same day that state Democrats held a press conference to announce that they would introduce marriage-equality legislation when it convenes a new session tomorrow.
And yet, the Democrats are closing out a session in which they allowed business concerns to trump environmental ones — passing a bill delaying implementation of new sewer restrictions — and approving privatization of school construction and management.
So, how exactly progressive is the New Jersey Legislature? More progressive than it has been during the first two years of the Christie administration — and just in time for a presidential election year.
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Let's just take on one piece of stupidity … minimum wage legislation!Make it one hundred dollars an hour!Absurd. Sure, but why? Because if you don't understand that a wage is a reflection of the value that the position creates. Wish and hoping ain't going to change the realities. Now let's examine the motivation for why politicians want to \”raise the minimum wage\”.We know that businesses lay off or restructure to avoid it. Full timers become part time. Hours get cut. And, on the margins, businesses close and everyone one loses. So why?It's very simple.When the \”minimum wage\” is raised all the politicians, bureaucrats, and Gooferment \”workers\” get a raise. And, usually union contracts are pegged to the minimum wage, so they get a raise as well.So why would a Democrat want to raise the minimum wage? It's a payoff of taxpayer money to the Democratic base.Argh!
Oh, oh, how horrible, how terrible, workers getting more money. It's an outrage, it's an outrage. Workers should pay their employers to work, workers should work for free because their employer was kind enough to give them a job. We need a return to slavery but this time around the greedy workers will not be supplied housing or food. How dare those greedy workers expect more money for their puny efforts! In libertarian universe lowly workers should not expect to be paid for all their efforts. Are all libertarians so anti-worker, anti-union, anti-poor people? Yes, of course they are. Oh wait, just leave it to all those spposed charities. Libertarian utopia is full of beggars, hordes of homeless people without health care and uneducated poor children who can't afford an education (there are no publicly supported schools in libertarian dystopia). Libertarianism is an absolute EVIL.
For pity's sake, they're raising the minimum wage from $7.25/hour to $8.50/hour, which is a poverty wage. But what else would I expect from an anti-worker, anti-union ideologue like a libertarian. I must say that the REPEATED use of the word gooferment is really juvenile and silly beyond belief. The minimum wage hasn't been raised in ages, it's been at a below the poverty level for a long time. The new minimum wage for NJ will still be at a poverty level. Unless my math is wrong, $8.50 an hour (based on a 40 hour work week) is well below $20k a year. $20k a year in NJ!! Libertarians really hate workers, they look upon the workers as a nuisance or necessary evil. Libertarians are always for the employers, the rich and powerful. They never take the side of the workers; without the workers there would be no business, nobody to buy the products of their labors.
Can't tell if there is one TROLL or two, but let's just try to assert three points:(1) If the minimum wage has been below the poverty level, then the minimum wage law is meaningless. Unless the purpose is to raise wages for bureaucrats and union workers.(2) Minimum wages laws merely ENSURE that the low-skilled workers have to go on the dole. (If they were underpaid for their work, they'd go elsewhere and get a fair wage.) And, they are not beholden to employers, like a beggar, since employers need good employees probably more than the employee needs them. (They can find others to employ them at similar wages.)(3) The second troll makes a vocabulary error. \”Publicly supported schools\” doesn't mean \”Gooferment Skrules\”. Historically, the poor children received education; the patron saint of my alma mater St. John Baptiste de LaSalle founded an order of men on that very principle. Don't relegate effective charity to the \”libertarian paradise\”. Most good done today is either the result of or has it's roots in charity. See to attract donations, a charity has to be effective and efficient. Something Gooferment, or \”Big Charity\” (i.e. United Way; Red Croass) doesn't have to be concerned with. Think Salvation Army versus the State Welfare Office.And, \”Gooferment\” is a great way to distinguish what we have today with an out of control entity that has given itself a monopoly on the use of force. A far cry from what the Dead Old White Guys wanted for posterity.Finally, those mean cruel Libertarians are fundamentally opposed to the Gooferment theft of wealth from the People by means of inflation. The poor, the old on fixed incomes, and the young are being robbed systematically by the cabal of \”money men\”. The purchasing power of the \”dollar\” has decreased 99.99% since that icon of the Democratic Party took the People's gold in 1932. The warfare / welfare state has been funded by that ever since. You whine for the poor; yet, you allow them to be silently robbed by debasement of the currency.Strange the things you applaud and those you condemn to a \”libertarian paradise\”.And, in case you didn't notice, there is only one candidate who wants to have peace, smaller government, and honest money. He's the \”nut job\”.Argh!