as seen on tv
Senator
http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/17/politics/hillary-clinton-south-carolina-unemployment/
If you ever wondered how the $15 an hour minimum wage was going to work, Hillary just gave us the answer yesterday. She plans to use tax dollars to fund “apprenticeships” for jobless youth at america’s corporations. And of course she hopes they vote for her – but there’s no explicit requirement to do so.
I don’t know about you, but I’m going to be THRILLED to have my taxes make up the difference between what a worker is really worth on the market, and the $15 an hour he has to be paid as a result of politics.
It will be worth it – paying more taxes – just to get a generation of stoners out of their mom’s basements and “apprenticed” as burger flippers, Kmart cashiers, Amazon.com stockboys, and wait-persons, won't it?
Those jobs used to pay the old minimum wage ($7.50/$8.00 an hour) because the people taking them were completely unskilled, and worth very little. Due to absenteeism, screw ups, inventory theft, "attitude problems" and what not. Since we’re doubling the minimum wage, we now have to make up the wage difference for burger flippers with tax subsidies to corporations, to prevent them from hiring robots instead. (Reality check – isn’t a robot still going to be more reliable than a stoner dropout or gang banger from the hood?)
I now cede the floor to the elitist left wing guy ranting in the first row. The guy with a cushy upper/middle class background, who doesn’t know how apprenticeships work. He’s going to tell us that “real” apprenticeships involve plumbing, electrican, HVAC, carptentry, stonemason work, flooring . . .
And he’s right. Those are "tradtional" trades. But companies in those fields STILL aren’t going to hire stoners and getto boyz, with or without tax subsidies. They’re hiring the kids whose parents already work in those trades. The competition for skilled trade jobs is fierce, and those jobs are parceled out through family connections, or to kids who tradesmen coached in youth football, or to nephews, or returning vets, or . . . well, you get the idea.
Trevor the stoner doesn’t have a chance, even if he does use murine to remove the red from his eyes before he meanders up from the basement, leaving behind Halo 3. Neither do the gang bangers in the hood, who are more likely than not to view this as an opportunity to liberate copper pipe (tres expensive), power tools, and bulk quantities of McDonald’s raw ingredients for resale on the open market.
Sorry Hillary – your apprenticeship proposal is DOA.
And Trump – would you shut the EFF up about becoming the “jobs president” if you’re elected!!! Your last TV show was called “you’re fired!”, or something, wasn’t it? Nobody believes a word that comes out of your mouth, Mr Big Wig.
Full disclosure – ASOT has “apprenticed” as a cashier, bill collector, insurance claims adjuster, and waitress in the past. None of these are careers. There is no upward mobility. So I don’t care if the minimum wage is $15 or $1,500 – it doesn’t fix anything, if people think they can live on this.
