Who works for the poor?

The Michigan Partisan

By Page W. H. Brousseau IV
TIMES STAFF WRITER

Over the course of my years, I have had many jobs. I worked for the federal government in the military, worked in a gas station owned by a man who was less concerned with my name than his profits, "Wha wer mer profits?" he would annoyingly ask every morning.

I also worked for this university, an international data processing company, a nationwide sporting goods store then a Flint based light industrial company. At no time in my life have I ever received a paycheck from someone who was poor, unemployed or working for minimum wage.

The vague Socialist agenda that many Democrats espouse is that business is evil. If you are a CEO you, by definition, are evil because you exploit people (by paying them low wages) to make money.

However, today the struggle between labor and capital has leveled off since the times of Pinkerton pipe-wielding criminals from the inner city were used to break up strikes and create racial strife amongst labor.

Now there is significant government regulation on safety, and companies are restricted on what they may or may not fire an employee over, even now courts have ruled the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) 2overs such ridiculous "disabilities" as alcoholism and kleptomania.

This writer's point is to show that labor, with Democratic and minimal Republican help, has made significant gains even to the point of absurdity. Forty percent of union members repaid the Democratic Party by voting for the GOP in 2000.

Why is that? It is because of Al Gore and the Democratic "class warfare" that inundated the 2000 campaign. "Big Oil", "Big Tobacco", "Big Three", "Big Pharmaceutical Companies" were all conspiring to drive the poor, the old, the unions, and every other Democratic sub-group into the ground.

Al Gore howled over the "outrageous profits" these companies were making. In the Gore-Lieberman administration, economic attention would be focused, I assume, on lowering profits. One may presume that Democratic thought is that if companies have lower profits their workers are better off. If this absurd logic is not the real intent by the Democrats, what can it be? So the Democratic economic agenda is monetary redistribution, take from the rich to give to the poor in entitlement programs.

Case in point is the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT); this is a tax on businesses that was implemented during the Reagan administration, which, according to Democrats, was in the pocket of Big Business. The AMT was designed so businesses pay "their fair share."

There is no definition of "fair share," but it is good Democratic politics to say businesses need to pay more than they do. While the Democrats argue that repeal of AMT would give GM, IBM or Ford a free ride, the truth is some 23,000 companies were forced to pay AMT last year.

That is 23,000 companies that had to send the federal government money as opposed to hiring new -workers, improving their equipment, giving their employees a pay increase, or even used to stay in business. Thanks to AMT, 23,000 companies had to send money to Washington whether they made "outrageous profits" or not.

Minimum wage is another case where governmental meddling has impeded economic growth, caused untold numbers to be unemployed and further untold numbers to become content on working where they are because concerned politicians are looking out for their well being.

Minimum wage was created so there would be a step on the economic ladder to stand on. Now that step seems to be not enough and there are calls from liberal and progressive leaders calling for a "living wage."

It may hurt to hear this but if you work for minimum wage you probably deserve it. As a work seeker last year I found one job that was paying minimum wage, but because I have a sense of self worth I refused to work for $5.15 an hour.

I have worked at a minimum wage job before, and to be honest, some of my fellow minimum wage earners should not have been paid half that much. They were rude, late and incompetent.

To say those people were worth, at the time $4.75, is an insult to those people who are worth $4.75. If you have no skills, no drive, no self worth and you agree to work for $5.15 you deserve.

I do not mind working for minimum wage while in school and a majority of those working minimum wage are between jobs, learning a skill, going to high school or college, or supplementing their income. There is a difference between a career and a job. The Left fails to see this and deems on making Grill Cook #2 a worthy profession.

This past summer the campus of Harvard was ablaze in student protest over not giving custodial employees a "living wage" of $10.25; they were then making $7.25. I find it quite amusing rich kids going to a 50,000 a year university feel the best way for them to lift the lot of custodial workers is to occupy offices and protest for a pay raise.

Perhaps they could mention how education and job skills, or even access to capital may be more beneficial and compassionate than forcing those custodial employees t pursue a career in scrubbing.

A little off the subject but equally amusing is the student newspaper The Harvard Crimson, which has repeatedly editorialized and given space for socialist-left rants against sweatshops and global capitalism, has hired Cambodian typists making 40 cents an hour to transcribe 19th century copies of the Crimson into digital format.

The worst part of the debate over "living wage" is it compels those at the bottom economically to look to government and not themselves for social and economic improvement. Instead of striving to increase the job skills of those at the bottom, the Left strives to force companies to pay them more than their economic worth, which leads to less money available for new employees and an increase of prices in goods and services as employers try to recover the lost revenue.

Democrats seem to think that every economic burden on a company comes out of the pockets of those at the top. Lost profits because of higher minimum wages and frivolous taxes such as the AMT are recouped through a cut in personnel or high prices in goods and services, none of which are paid by those in the company but consumers.

Any CEO or manager who would just take the loss of revenue without cutting expediters or raising prices on goods is full of incompetence at best and criminality at worst.

Those who see something wrong with a CEO making millions while those at the bottom of the company make $10 an hour either wish for an ideal Communist system where everyone receives the same wage and through taxes the people work for the government not for themselves. Or a version of a socialist-fascist system where the government dictates all things business related. People work for -the rich because they have money and a need for workers.

Those that start off at the bottom have to have the drive to advance in the company or acquire enough skills to work in another company that they can advance in, or be giving the tools and the economical environment to pursue their own business. If individuals feel they deserve a higher wage it is up to them to prove to their employer that they are worth it.

All employees are not equal and the Democrats refuse to recognize this, and if the uneducated and unskilled can come to see the Democrats as their savior instead of themselves, the real goal of the Democrats and the Left will be successful. And that is a class of Americans uneducated and unskilled who see their employers as part of the "evil rich" and feel they cannot function without Democrats in elected offices.

The Democrats may say they work for the poor, but their policies create unemployment by governmental regulatory interference. Worst of all, they do not inspire the best America has to offer: self-reliance and the economic liberty that drives the engines of capital.