Minimum Wage Demogoguery

Our Insurance Salesman-in-Chief is trying to change the subject.


The roll-out of his (Un)Affordable Care Act was so crappy, so ridiculously poor, so Godawfully flawed, and so never-in-history-bad that the Dems are afraid they'll lose the Senate come November.  And, by God, they hopefully will.  Our Country was sold a bill of goods with Obamacare, and the chickens, as Reverend Wright likes to say, are coming home to roost. 


So Obama, ever the champion of avoiding the blame, for anything, ever, EVER, is hoping that pointing to that shiny object over there will take America's attention away from Obamacare.  And that shiny object du jour is chiding American lawmakers into raising the Federal minimum wage. 


The minimum wage now stands at $7.25.  Oblamo wants to raise it to $10.10.  Where he got that strange number is unknown.  My supposition is that he simply snatched it out of the sky, where he gets the rest of his weird ideas.  Maybe while playing golf.  And now he's traveling to safe Blue States to bang the drum.  He's trying to paint Republicans who don't share his populist message, as being anti-poor, anti-underclass, anti-women, anti-gay, anti-American, anti-midget, anti-Chevrolet and anti-apple pie.  Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth (truth being something with which Oblamo and his cadre of sycophants is completely unfamiliar).


Republicans are for market-driven solutions.  They don't believe it's in America's best interest to dictate to small businesses everywhere how much and how often they should use their scarce resources to reward minimum wage, just-starting-out earners.  After all, it's none of the Federal Government's business how much a business pays its workers.  Or even if they pay them.  Americans vote with their feet.  If a business doesn't pay enough, and you deserve more, then move along to one that does.  That's the beauty of capitalism. 


The un-anointed might ask, "What's the big deal?  It's just a couple of bucks an hour, right?"


Wrong.  Here, Mr./Mrs./Ms./Other America, is what's the big deal:


The average McDonald's, as an example, employs 50.1 part-time employees.  They used to employ a mix of full- and part-timers, but no longer.  Obamacare's 29 hour threshold for full-time consideration (after 30, they must be given health care...perish the thought) did away with that.  And with it, ten hours a week an employee could expect to work.  Now, they have nothing but part-timers.  Thank you, Mr. Oblamo.


Mickey D's franchisee's pay their people an average of $8.09 an hour.  So, an average of, let's say, 25 people working at any given time, times the $2 increase Barry wants, equals about $50 an hour.  Multiply that times Mickey's average workday of 18 hours.  That works out to an additional cost of operation to a Mickey D business owner of more than nine  hundred bucks a day!   That's nearly sixty three hundred bucks a week!  More than $300,000 a year!  And it would be more for a franchisee who chose, chose, to pay his folks more, or for those restaurants who stay open more hours per day (a significant minority).  And more, again, if you factor in increased costs for matching employer contributions.  So let's just say that the average Mickey's would lose nearly one-half million dollars per year!


Put simply, the increase Oblamo wants the Mickey D's guys to cough up is quite a bit more than they make off their store.  That would bankrupt a store owner.  They just can't sell that many more Big Macs.  It would also cause people not to want to franchise with McDonald's.  Or Wendy's.  Or Burger King, KFC, Panda Express, Dairy Queen, CPK, etc., etc., etc.


Or ACE Hardware, or your local car wash, or the area mom-and-pop pizza store, or your video rental parlor, or your friendly mechanic.  Or, virtually anyone who tries to own and operate a small business in your home town.  Hmmm.


So, Barry's populist wet dream would put America into a depression.  Of course, if he knows this, he doesn't care.  Presumably, he has folks working for him that know this, and have probably told him, but  I'm guessing he's counting on nothing happening regarding this wealth redistribution scheme.  The Repubs will balk at this B.S. plan.  Then he can blame them for keeping entry-level workers from receiving a much-needed handout.  Those hard-hearted bastards!   They should be punished!


It should be noted that 80% of those who entered the workforce in the bottom quintile finish up their careers in higher income categories.  And, note also that one in eight people in America started out by working at a McDonald's!  If McDonald's didn't exist, where would all those people begin their careers?  Where would little Johnnie and Julie get a job to earn enough to put gas in the family car to get them back and forth to junior college?


Oh wait.  I hear the high-pitched voice of a wussified weenie out there in Internetland screaming that there's another option to keep America's small businesses from going out of business.  They could just raise their prices enough to offset the increased costs associated with keeping Oblamo happy, right?  Yeah, that's the ticket!  Just raise their prices!  Let's see.  A Big Mac would cost, oh, let's say $8.00.  Not including fries.  Or a drink.  Order up a meal and you'd be paying about twelve bucks!  And nobody would be buying.  America would wean itself off fast foot mach schnell.  And the small businesses would still be out of business.  It would just take a bit longer to get there.  And it would bankrupt legions of small business owners in the process.  Talk about an unhappy meal!


Now you know how politics works.  The Dems want you to think they're on your side while they kowtow to enviro-whacko tree-huggers, union thugs, like-minded Mainstream Media cohorts, room-temperature-I.Q. slackers, and commie, pinko, dumbass liberals.  That's so you'll vote to put them in office, or keep them there, while America burns.  Still think it's a good idea to redistribute your local video rental guy's money to increase the minimum wage?


This whole thing would be funny, if it wasn't so tragic...