On working in America:
Our labor market has been stuffed for years.A combination of minimum wage,social engineering (taxpayer funded welfare),liberal lies and cheap foreign labor has our labor force on it’s head.
The bottom rung labor must be paid by law minimum wage set at $7.25/hr,many “workers” aren’t worth that.They are nothing more than warm bodies meant to stuff payrolls and satisfy hiring mandates,if they actually contribute to the company all the better.So if you have a teen just entering the labor force that doesn’t know up from down you must pay them $7.25/hr.
Okay,if we move up from the warm bodies we get into what is now skilled labor.If you can wash a toilet,flip a hamburger or mop the floor congrats!Your in the new “skilled section” you make $8-9.20/hr.And of course you have “earned’ this position by showing up more or less on time for work at least 3 out of 5 days.
The next tier are the best of those two groups,the ones that show some ambition and actually punch a clock 5 out of 5.Might make it into “management” at McDonalds or KFC possibly even at a convenience store.Doesn’t pay anymore,but the air of “responsibility” has it’s rewards and after all if you aren’t arrested at work for some crime you committed the night before you deserve it right?
The next group,still more ambition,boss actually trusts them with a tool,possibly even a computer given constant supervision,wages “jump” from $9.20 all the way up to $10.50,with that you can almost afford to buy some new clothes,a beater car and pay the rent.
Now we get into the real money,the folks with 2 years at junior college.They are the route truck drivers,the receptionists,the electricians,the HVAC installers.They’re pay is all over the place,literally.If they are good people they have to jump jobs for the first ten years to find decent pay or give up and get another two years of school in another field.$11 to $18/hr,but very many hours means some of the most over worked people on the planet.
Next up,the old school skilled trades,welders,steam fitters,machinists,tool and die makers,nurses,teachers,heavy construction workers and long haul truckers.Your getting older,you’ve been through some of the rest.made it though and now your getting up there in pay,you can expect $18-$40/hr plus some benefits.You end up doing everything in your field of expertise,plus some of the work dropped by the rest and most times are the first to show up and the last to leave.You used to make good coin,but somebody off in Washington stretched the coin till it broke and now you find yourself treading water again.
That is basically the state of American labor.So what does it all mean?
For starters artificially high wages for the lower classes of labor means less money to pay every labor group above them.This is one more case of a little government meddling in one area causing damage to the whole.The minimum wage can almost be described as the special Olympics of employment,where every employee is a winner just for showing up.With this system good employees are held back,mediocre ones don’t have to improve and rotten ones are difficult to weed out.In times past these jobs were meant to class and grade employees to insure that only the highest class in any grade moved up the chain.
The left will argue that such things shouldn’t be left to market forces,that new employees need protecting from themselves and without a base minimum wage only chaos can result.But this results in a stagnant labor pool and with stagnation comes a decline in class mobility better known as-serfdom.America was founded by people who voted with they’re feet.They didn’t like the way things were going where they were,so they packed up and left in search of something better.Often times that search was much harder than just staying home,but they did it all for just the hope of freedom-there were no guarantees.They opted to work out in the fields away from the town and away from the King across the ocean because that’s where they could be most free.
The left believes and encourages the notion of a defenseless worker,they need them to believe they are defenseless the same way they need minorities to believe racists are around every corner and there is nothing they themselves can do about it.They want people to subjugate themselves to the idea that they have no control over they’re own lives,it is a fundamental lie of the left and should never be under estimated.They do not want these people to see that they do not have to be stuck in one group.To allow them this would undermine they’re base and as we on the right well know throughout history the left has depended on masses of economic and social slaves-aka-serfs to remain in power.IF the concept of class mobility through work ethic and self-determination takes hold then even decades of social programing melts away in short order.
So what of the higher classes of labor?For starters they have little if no support from the lower classes.Another tool of the left is class envy and it is essential in maintaining control.Resentment of the upper classes is minor and light so long as the lower classes can reasonably expect a chance of moving up.But when the labor pool becomes stagnant and class barriers begin to solidify resentment grows into indifference to one’s job.This manifests itself into quotas not being met,poor attention to performance and a general bad moral.As a result whatever slack is generated must be picked up by the next class up the chain in order to maintain production.It’s why the delivery Driver must check his own consist or why the Secretary must empty her own trash bin or the Weldor must wrap his own leads.The lower class have determined to do the bare minimum.The result is an added work load on the producers who do the jobs by choice because they must be done.The downside of this is management comes to expect them to do this which leads to burnout and resentment of both the lower classes and management.
So we have a big mess,but what to do? Since our beginnings class mobility has been kept alive by entrepreneurship,the ability of the industrious citizen to go it on his own and innovate thereby giving himself the ability to gain prosperity and secure a better future for himself and society as a whole.We are a country of risk takers,in our past we were people who weren’t satisfied with life in the valley,we had to cross mountains and see what was on the other side.
We still have that spirit,it still burns a flicker,but it is steadily going dim.Leftist desire for control has stifled entrepreneurship.The changes I have described above have played out in large commercial business over the past 90 odd years.The result in the past decades was that small business flourished,the ambitious hard working classes of workers being tired of where they were voted with they’re feet and left to start they’re own businesses.That’s one reason why today small business employs the majority of labor in America.However today government like a malignant cancer is spreading and snuffing out those businesses and those ideals at an alarming rate.Once proud business owners are seeing all they worked for thrown on the trash heap as they are being herded back to the plantation where a stagnant life of slavery awaits.This is not by accident,but by design.The left needs to grow they’re base,they need more slaves,but the plan may backfire.
There is a core group of people in this country,ones that know the truth,ones that will not yield.They are waiting for the tide to come in and to cross the ocean once more.They have already charted a course and they are waiting to set sail.
History describes the revolution as a war for Independence between the colonies and England.That description is true,but only tells half the story.I would say it was more a war of competing business models.In 1776 King George woke up one morning realized that America had gone in business for itself.The new business model was one where any individual could hit on an idea,strike out on it and depending on the merit of his intellect and ethic become wealthy with out concern for class standing or royal linage.Our grand experiment got off to a rocky start,but soon the only way the old system could compete was to become like the new.The result was the two greatest economic powers in world history being formed bringing with them the greatest swath of freedom in human history.
That’s all I have for now,if the readers of this can tolerate my butchery of the Queen’s English in the future I’ll give my take on where imported labor falls into this.
Darin
