"By creating a barrier higher than the market will bear, jobs are actually lost."

Did you catch that sentence? I had heard it articulated and understand that people will in reality lose jobs when the small business employers are required to pay a higher wage. I understood the premise. However, I didn't connect the dots relative to the timing of this bill sponsored by Democrats to raise the minimum wage. Just about campaign time for the next presidential election is when the last increment to the wage increase would hit and the unemployment figures would be rising and "poor people" would be crying out about losing jobs. Thus a campaign platform is shored up for the Democraps. Nice strategy, but they were brought down by their diabolical demand for as much taxation as the populace will possibly stand. The GOP better wise up for the next round, for surely it will come.

Old Soldier, the wage issue has always been one I've had a difficult time with.

In various segments of my life, I have employed people to do jobs on my dime. I've always paid them more than what the marketplace believed they should earn, not in penny or quarter increments, but in dollars. A job worth $7.00 per hour in the marketplace has been worth as much as $16.00 an hour to me, sometimes more. I am loyal, in an extreme, to the folks that help me make "mine".

The problem is that a lot of small businessmen are too hungry to bother feeling any loyalty to their employees: A guy with 100 employees who's netting 10 million bucks a year has no problem with a 1 million dollar envelope containing all compensation, including benefits, etc.

The result is a lot of bitter employees, and these folks will inevitably vote Dumbocrat.

I don't believe in the government imposing a minimum wage, it's not their purview to do so and it's not good for the economy, however: Business owners invite this shit! They set themselves up for it by not paying employes what they are worth.

As an example, I managed a very large jean store a few years ago for a family that ran a small chain. They didn't pay commission, just flat salaries. They had a salary cap of $12.50 an hour for sales people. One of my employees sold an easy 5 million a year, and not only would they not give her a pay raise, they wouldn't even give her a decent Christmas bonus. At the same time, the family gave themselves very large bonuses.

Granted, it was their prerogative as the owners, but it's exactly that hungry, cheap B.S. that opens the door to Democrat interference.

Every cheap, piece of shit greedy business owner who refuses to share even a little bit with his/her biggest assets gives the Democrats votes, and helps them victimize those business people who truly can't afford to pay more than the minimum wage.

Seth, I hear you, but sometimes employees do get paid what they are worth. Sometimes they aren't even worth $5.15/hour. Too many folks think they are worth $25/hour but only produce at a rate far below that level.

I know there are also crude people that will ride the backs of their employees for every cent they can get. Eventually, those employers will reap what they sow. But, you're right, they drive people right into the arms of Democraps.

As an aside, by any chance were those stingy owners Democraps?

Actually, Old Soldier, they were, LOL.

Then they turn around and vote for the same people who condemn their very existence.

Sorry about the rant, but I've known some incredibly hungry people in my time, and my own preference has always been to take care of people who take care of me. Compensation issues irritate the hell out of me -- strong assets need to be paid well, weak non-assets need to be fired, because a business (or a government agency, for that matter), should not be a job fair for the unemployable or the lazy.

Whenever I've been in the position to determine what I'm going to pay somebody, I do the interview and while I'm pretty tolerant with people in general (believe it or not), I can be very hardnosed in business matters. I conduct a tough interview, and I only hire those I am positive will return in work what I overpay them in compensation. If an employee isn't living up to expectations, he gets one "corrective interview", and if that doesn't show immediate and overwhelmingly major results(pressure on him), he's gone.

The problem is, and I'm applying this not only to matters of compensation, that all too many of us create our own problems where liberals' interference via gubmint is concerned: We need to learn to compromise in advance, that is, to place ourselves in more easily defended positions long before the battle begins. We have to be able to say, "What do you mean, I'm under-compensating my employees? I pay them X dollars an hour over the minimum wage for a minimum wage job, I give them X benefits and I run an OSHA compliant shop. Leave me the hell alone!"

The left has absolutely nothing of a tangible nature to contribute to America, which leaves them only issues of "conscience" (social issues) with which to keep a hand in politics, and they have become masters at exploiting these issues. If business proprietaries, from small retail operations to large corporations who can actually afford to be a tad more generous with employees would do so, liberals/Dems would have that much less ammunition and become even less relevant than they are now.

And they do hold some relevance, as even though they're losing seats in Congress, their PC doctrine and other social manipulations have become well woven into the social fabric of America through their media.

It's right-thinking America's job, in the interests of staving off the socialist environment they are fast creating, to deny them as many targets as possible.

The issue of minimum wage can be a thorny one. However, I despise government intervention in a capitalistic system. Government interference undermines economic principles and leads us further down the road of socialism.

Wow! I finally was able to get in here!

In response to your article, compensation issues also irritate me. I agree that too many people are not worth even paying minimum wage to. Employers should get rid of the drones and pay their real workers what they are worth. They should do that automatically, but unfortunately many do not.

I really can't get upset about this vote. The bill was a horrendous bill, a blatant example of cynical legislative sausage making, and we're all better off by its going down, regardless of the reasons.

Besides, on the minimum wage issue, there was an insidious provision that could have cut wages for restaurant workers in seven states, which from a philosphical viewpoint also represented another example of unjustifiable Federal expropriation of State power.

The three components of the bill (minimum wage, estate tax, and the package of tax credit renewals, etc.) should be voted on separately, and the additional special interest provisions tacked on designed to attract a few votes were not in the best interests of the rest of us and should not see the light of day again.

So good riddance, and let's see what happens the next time these issues come up.

AOW --

I concur 100%. The point of my last comment was that as long as there are Democrats, we will be exposed to attempts to legislate government regulation and other interference in private business. It is one of the few platforms they have whose victories have a tangible effect on anything of any relevance to any voters, right, wrong or indifferent, and they will exploit every vunerability they find.

If businesses just stand there and say, "Well, they can't do that, because it's not right!" and don't take any "advance countermeasures" to dilute whatever statistics the Dems might use as ammo, the next back office or boardroom sentiment will be, "Well, they shouldn't have done that, because it wasn't right!"

This scenario occurs over and over in one area or another, and nobody ever learns the lesson they need to learn, I don't know why -- maybe it's collective optimism, maybe it's because so many businesses hate putting up the relatively minor cost of "preventive maintenance".

Sorry, that's how I approach business: Too much chess as a kid, too much immersion in working in a business in which paranoia is too often a tool, LOL.

Gayle --

That's just it.

But -- most people outside Business don't realize just how much government regulation Business is already subjected to, nor how exposed they are to fraudulent and overstated lawsuits by employees in this liberal-spawned age of litigation. When a company hires someone it has a lot more worries than it did when I was growing up. In order to avoid getting milked, they have to spend a lot of money that some smaller concerns are unable to afford, exploring the legalities and weighing the risks of every question they print on an application, doing serious background checks on employee candidates, painstakingly composing an employee handbook, again exploring the legalities, etc. They have to comply with a whole slew of labor laws {ahem, more government regulation}, many of which can be construed in any direction an egg-sucking trial lawyer wishes to construe them. There are at least thousands of liability kerfuffles every day, in courts all over the country. Personnel-wise, businesses are stuck -- they actually have to be reallllly careful about firing an incompetent employee. There are tools for dealing with that in advance, but most small businesses, some medium sized businesses and a lot of franchise operations all too often don't use them.

I would.

Civil Truth --

I couldn't agree more. I've never believed in that kind of compromise among members of Congress.

It reminds me of my pre-adolescence, when a friend and I were negotiating:

Him: "Look, you give me the amethyst geode and the big piece of feldspar, I'll give you these cool quartz crystals and five trilobytes."

Me: "What're you, nuts? I've got a whole shoebox full of trilobytes. Gimme that sodalite and the quartz crystals..."

In my opinion, the same sort of activity in Congress is neither dignified, nor, infinitely more importantly, all too often good for the American people as a whole.

They often betray their constituencies when they trade off like that, for one thing. What if you or I were all for the minimum wage hike, opposed to any estate tax at all and critical of the tax credit package? Will we receive an urgent questionnaire asking what we think? Of course not, he'll use the trust we've vested in him as a bargaining chip. Sometimes they get out of line, as in the thankfully rejected bill. I wonder how many concessions Mass congressmen had to make to enable the Big Dig, or how many Alaska's had to make to obtain financing for the aborted Bridge to Nowhere project in Ketchikan (even though the project was de-earmarked, Alaska gets to keep the money for "other projects", go figure).

The issues these folks were juggling are too important not to be addressed individually, and the very fact of the bill, in private sector lingo, indicates "shoddy work" on the part of people we send to Washington to represent us.

Even on the Hill (notice how I skipped the C word, I know I'll get it wrong no matter what), they seem to have forgotten the value of taking pride in ones work.