We keep hearing all this stuff about what Obama should do, but we never seem to hear anything about the basic "Objective". Is the objective more jobs or higher minimum wage ore better level of education? Before we can determine what to do, we have to first agree on the "objective". What we have is Obama at the steering wheel and a bunch of people telling him to turn here or there. Before anyone can tell him where to turn, we have to first agree on where we are going. Obama wants everyone to be equal as in some kind of socialist economic system. He has never seen on of these systems work any place in the world, but he seems to think that is what we should have. In any large system, it is impossible to make everyone equal except at "one" point and that is at "zero" or where no one has anything and we all die of starvation. That is the only place where an Obama systems works. Rather than make us all equal at "zero", I feel that our objective should be to make the USA the wealthiest country in the world. I know that no body will be equal in that system, but the average person will be better off than in any other system. Further, it will not be a static system located at "zero". Individuals will be moving up and down in that economic system. Poor will become rich and rich will become poor. Notice how exciting a football game is during a "time out"? That seems to be what Obama wants, a football game where nothing is happening, but all players and teams are equal. Yes, and every player is holding a football.
Once we can agree on an objective, the next thing is to test actions against that objective to see if it gets our car where we want to go. Take the "minimum wage" that Obama's new economic advisor feels is so important. I don't know what it is now and it does not matter. Make this simple test. What happens if we raise it and what happens if we reduce it? Now we test this against our objective of making the USA the wealthiest country in the world. Wealth being the highest GNP per average person. That is just the GNP divided by the number of people in the USA. Simple. In our example, let's take a typical company that makes door knobs and sells them all over the world against competitors who are also all over the world. What happens if the minimum wage is increased? First, our company will sell fewer door knobs around the world because his will cost more. He might still be able to sell a few door knobs here before his competitors move in. The few employees who he can still afford to hire will have more money to spend and will buy the competitor's door knobs because they are cheaper. After a short time the company will be out of business or the best case, only the very best and most productive employees will remain and all others layed off. Seems clear that raising the minimum wage is a bad idea for our "objective".
What happens if we lower the minimum wage? Our company could now hire some workers who were young and inexperienced to make door knobs and he just might be able to reduce his cost. This would allow him to sell more here and abroad. The company could expand and the owners could make more money. The extra profit did not come out of the hide of the workers, it came from selling more product and allowing lower skilled workers to produce something rather than just sitting home and eating up tax money.
Seems clear to me that if the minimum wage goes up there will be fewer workers and if the minimum wage goes down there will be more workers and the more workers we have the more wealth we will be producing and the less we will have to import. We have the same number of people here in the USA in both cases and when we divide that number into the total number of door knobs produced the wealth per person is greater. Now some of you might feel that if the worker gets paid less, the GNP per person goes down, but you have to add in the owners of the company too.
This picture is not static like a "time out" in a football game. Some of the kids who got their first job making door knobs now knows what it is like to have a job and now wants a better job. He figures out how he can also make door knobs even better and becomes rich. Wanting to get rich is not bad, but thinking that there is no way that you will ever become rich "is" bad. All unions want is a higher minimum wage. They see a football "time out" as the same thing as playing. During a "time out" the players are still being paid. In the case of our door knob company, what do you think would happen if one of the very good new young workers were paid more than one of the "older" workers. It would be a war. Unions don't want merit pay and they don't want union workers who want to start their own companies. Is this a sick concept or what?
When you hear all these talking head, remember the objective and that is to make the average person in the USA richer. Would our kids work as hard playing football or basketball if there was no one at the top making a lot of money? What if all sports were unionized and all players at all levels were paid the same? How would that be? I am talking about high school players making the same everyone else. It would be a very small number because few people would be watching on TV or anyplace else. The USA is wealthier because the best players get paid based on "merit". Interesting.
