Scott Walker vs. the Walton Family and McDonald’s’ CEO
The left claims they’re for American workers, and they’ve got lame ideas, things like minimum wage. Instead of focusing on that, we need to talk about how we get people skills and qualifications they need to get jobs that go well beyond minimum wage.
Yep, raising the minimum wage and instituting policies that get people skills and qualifications they need to get jobs that go beyond minimum wage definitely are mutually exclusive. Which I presume is why “the left” never, ever talks about getting people skills and qualifications they need to get jobs that go beyond minimum wage. They’re talking about raising the minimum wage instead!
When Clinton, Sanders, Obama, whoever, proposes free community college and free or low-tuition state university access, they always make clear that those proposals are alternatives to, not in addition to, raising the minimum wage. It’s one or the other; not both.
So really, it comes down to three alternative choices: (1) raise the minimum wage (the Democrats); (2) or make community college and state universities free or low-tuition, by supporting them through state and federal funding (the Democrats); or gutting state funding for state university and community college systems (Scott Walker).
We do indeed need to talk about how we get people skills and qualifications they need to get jobs that go beyond minimum wage. And talk, we will. Or at least the Democratic primary candidates will; not sure that the Republican ones will, since neither Walker nor any other the others has, yet. But, I mean, maybe Douglas Holtz-Eakin has some ideas that he can pass along to one or another of them. Who knows? Maybe to Scott Walker! Ideas about how we get people skills and qualifications they need to get jobs that go beyond minimum wage, while further gutting the federal and state tax bases, at least for the wealthy and for corporations.
Of course, we also need to talk about how we get people jobs that employ those newly acquired skills and qualifications—the ones they needed to get jobs that go beyond minimum wage. Presumably jobs that pay more than the minimum wage. Scott Walker apparently is unaware that there are huge numbers of people who have skills and qualifications for good jobs but haven’t found a good job, some of them who lost the one they had. Or maybe he’s aware of it and wants government to get out of the way. Let Detroit go bankrupt! Kill the National Labor Relations Act! And the Fair Labor Standards Act!
In any event, it’s completely unclear where people will stop in for hamburgers and fries, and where they will buy extremely cheap household items, once the fast food industry and Walmart have ceased to exist because there no longer are Americans who lack the skills and qualifications for good jobs and they’ve all found good jobs because we elected a Republican president who has persuaded Congress to enact a law that says that the way for people to get good jobs is for people to get good jobs. Rather than, say, electing a Republican president who has persuaded Congress to enact a law that says that the way for people to get full-time jobs is for people to get full-time jobs although with no promise that they will be good jobs and instead might be full-time minimum-wage ones.*
And certainly rather than electing a Democratic president who has persuaded Congress to enact a law significantly increasing the minimum wage, thus precluding persuading Congress to enact legislation than would assist people in getting people skills and qualifications they need to get jobs that go beyond minimum wage. And precluding even talking about it!
The good news for us Dems is that if Walker wins the nomination, we won’t have to worry about Walmart and McDonald’s exercising their First Amendment speech rights by donating to Walker’s campaign or Super PAC, since if he wins he will put them out of business.
*Paragraph edited slightly for clarity. 7/15 at 10:09 a.m.
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ADDENDUM: Okay. Just want to clarify, with the following exchange between reader Carol and me in the Comments thread:
Carol
July 14, 2015 3:11 pm
I was just curious, maybe I haven’t been listening closely, but when do Democrats state that education and the minimum wage are mutually exclusive? The minimum wage would be a short term solution to the fact that we have more and more people working in minimum wage jobs (that require a lot more skills than hamburger flipping, but hey, who cares about that discussion?) who can’t even feed their family, including those who have been pushed out of jobs that paid OK into jobs that don’t during this last and current depression. Education and training are long term solutions to meet a work world that (foolishly in most cases) wants more and more certification for jobs that don’t warrant the training. OJT really should be what should be provided, but most employers are too short-sighted and stupid to invest in their workers (see how many tolerate huge turnover when the real solution would be adequate pay and OJT). Whether education really should serve as the free training ground for employers who don’t even know what is needed is dubious. Education is always a good, but jobs training? Each business has specific skills, and from where I sit no one wants to take the time to show their employees what those are, preferring the sink or swim method. I see the massive stupidification of management as a big issue, and employees suffer.
Beverly Mann
July 14, 2015 3:56 pm
Damn. I forgot to say that this post is sarcasm. It’s sarcasm, Carol. The Democrats have not stated that education and the minimum wage are mutually exclusive. Scott Walker said that; the Democrats have not. The Democrats do understand that raising the minimum wage for people who right this very minute have minimum wage jobs—a large percentage of Walmart employees, fast food and other restaurant workers, hotel workers, and many, many others—does not actually preclude training people for non-minimum-wage jobs.
As [commenter] Denis Drew points out, the Germans have figured out how to train most of their workforce for non-minimum-wage jobs. And, largely because German labor has a big say in how businesses are run there, through co-determination worker councils that bring the workers into the design and manufacturing process throughout, Germany has managed also to actually have non-minimum-wage jobs available to their skilled workers, through increased productivity (the kind that economists talk about; not the kind that Jeb Bush talked about a few days ago).
Now that that’s clear ….
Added 7/14 at 4:10 p.m.
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UPDATE: Am I reading too much into this, or did Oklahoma’s Republican Party call Walmart and fast food chain minimum-wage workers who receive food stamps animals who live in national parks?
Whoa. If the Republicans keep this up, the Walmart family and fast food chain executives will start their own Super PAC. To help Democratic candidates! If a Republican wins the White House, their companies might have to start paying their employees enough for them to afford groceries.
Added 7/14 at 5:45 p.m.
which raises the question where did Walker get the skills he needs for a better than minimum wage job?
This talk from the right wing is always frustrating to hear. I can never help but think however that these people always talking about business needs never seem to have seriously thought about the fact that businesses aren’t complaining about the lack of graduates with the right degrees but rather about the fact that they can’t find people with the right experience. The business culture that only accepts proven success as a qualification has to face up to the fact that as long as they are only looking at the experiences with other employers as a valid qualification there isn’t anything anyone can do for them to provide these qualifications. So called business leaders either need to change their attitude and look at academic qualifications more seriously or they need to change their practices to train up people so that they can show the proven success they claim to want. The boilerplate from politicians like Walker does nothing but throw back on individuals problems they have no control over while assuaging the consciousness of those that do have power and control. There is no way for supply to meet demand because there is no action the supply (labor) can take to gain the qualifications that the demand (capital) is looking for because those qualifications are supplied solely by capital.
Tz:
You are still welcome to post here. We do welcome hard working students.
Dale actually read an article about Walker answering exactly that question.
Turns out that Walker’s actual major at Marquette was “Running for
Student Government” with a minor in “Getting Endorsements from Campus Organizations”. Near as any of those who either went to school with him or attempted to teach him that was the Alpha and Omega of his participation in college activities and it is fair to see that he had some reasonable success. Until his fourth year when he lost some election or another and since he was 34 credits from graduation just said to hell with it, dropped out, got a job. And started running for State Representative.
If your career choice since you were a boy was being elected to public office and as long as those jobs pay more than minimum wage (and the full time ones do) the skills you need to get THAT minimum wage job are hustle, glad-handing, and a willingness to pander to whoever will help you on your way.
Examined in this way Scott Walker is WAY smarter than Bobby Jindal. Because Bobby wasted years excelling in school and ultimately earning a Rhodes Scholarship when in fact he seems always to have had the same career goal as Scott. I mean just think of those years wasted by Bobby getting a Biology Degree. Hell in his current career path a background in science is more career drag than his dabbling in exorcisms.
[ The left claims they’re for American workers, and they’ve got lame ideas, things like minimum wage. We need to talk about how we get people skills and qualifications they need to get jobs that go beyond minimum wage. ]
100,000 out of (my guess) 200,000 MINORITY, gang age males in Chicago are in street gangs presumably because they wont work for a minimum wage that’s half what it minimally should be. In like manner WHITE, American born, Chicagoans (me) will no longer work as taxi drivers because: meter 50 cents below 1981, 40% more cabs since, now free trolleys between hot spots, subways to both airports, unlimited limos.
Germany has 16% college. WHICH LEADS ME UP TO A MOST UNBELIEVABLE THING I READ LAST NIGHT IN TOM GEOGHEGAN’S ONLY ONE THING CAN SAVE US,.”
Tom portrays US auto manufacturers dumbing down (it’s called “simplicity”) — I’m just starting to write about this for the first time — it really means nationally gutting productivity in the usual short-sighted quest to squeeze labor.
In Germany labor (having a big say because of the co-determination worker councils) employees are brought into the design and manufacturing process to the enth degree. Which makes them productive enough to average $66 an hour with benefits.
In the US manufacturing jobs are now being reduced to simpler and simpler component parts — why auto workers can be reduced from $28 an hour to $14.
Thing is we only have X amount of workers — a fixed number. If we are now on a nationwide race to shrink the productivity of individual workers — that may look good for an individual company but — fallacy of composition — we are on a head long charge to lower and lower our national output. !!!
Meantime all other economies in the world — especially the third world — are desperately attempting to pick up (and/or steal) product manufacturing skills so they can achieve maximum possible prosperity some day. We can wave to them going up while we are going down.
Feb 12, 2015 By Peter R. Orszag
“It’s hard to believe that Governor Scott Walker’s proposal to cut $300 million from the University of Wisconsin’s budget over the next two years would allow the school to maintain its quality.”
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-02-10/scott-walker-s-risky-college-experiment
Denis
there is something about the intelligence of upper management, at least as i saw it (don’t ask about lower management).
back in 1980 we… us workers… introduced a computer to our engineering office while top management was saying there was no place for a computer in an engineering field office.
we also had the only boss (middle manager) i ever met who was smart enough to leave us alone. we tripled our productivity and tried to tell the big bosses about the computer. not interested.
about three years later computers became the fad (true they were good for production too, but i think it was the fad that sold them to the bosses) and after stumbling around a bit they introduced computers to field offices…
then they tied all us dumb workers by compter into the central office so we could take detailed instructions from them for every move we made on the job. needless to say production declined, but they never noticed.
me, i quit.
Bruce
yep.
I was just curious, maybe I haven’t been listening closely, but when do Democrats state that education and the minimum wage are mutually exclusive? The minimum wage would be a short term solution to the fact that we have more and more people working in minimum wage jobs (that require a lot more skills than hamburger flipping, but hey, who cares about that discussion?) who can’t even feed their family, including those who have been pushed out of jobs that paid OK into jobs that don’t during this last and current depression. Education and training are long term solutions to meet a work world that (foolishly in most cases) wants more and more certification for jobs that don’t warrant the training. OJT really should be what should be provided, but most employers are too short-sighted and stupid to invest in their workers (see how many tolerate huge turnover when the real solution would be adequate pay and OJT). Whether education really should serve as the free training ground for employers who don’t even know what is needed is dubious. Education is always a good, but jobs training? Each business has specific skills, and from where I sit no one wants to take the time to show their employees what those are, preferring the sink or swim method. I see the massive stupidification of management as a big issue, and employees suffer.
Damn. I forgot to say that this post is sarcasm. It’s sarcasm, Carol. The Democrats have not stated that education and the minimum wage are mutually exclusive. Scott Walker said that; the Democrats have not. The Democrats do understand that raising the minimum wage for people who right this very minute have minimum wage jobs—a large percentage of Walmart employees, fast food and other restaurant workers, hotel workers, and many, many others—does not actually preclude training people for non-minimum-wage jobs.
As Denis Drew points out, the Germans have figured out how to train most of their workforce for non-minimum-wage jobs. And, largely because German labor has a big say in how businesses are run there, through co-determination worker councils that bring the workers into the design and manufacturing process throughout, Germany has managed also to actually have non-minimum-wage jobs available to their skilled workers, through increased productivity (the kind that economists talk about; not the kind that Jeb Bush talked about a few days ago).
Carol
aside from the confusion re Beverly’s sarcasm, I would have to agree with everything you said.
problem is, who will educate the bosses?
i think… only a guess… that bosses in “my own business” are always glad to train a person, if they find one with aptitude. not always easy. and of course there are lazy bosses, perhaps the kind that buy a fast food ranchise, and rely on high unemployment levels to manage the turnover from low wages and no opportunities… the bosses call this laziness. but i think the real problem comes from the fact that those “my own businesses” are being replaced by corporate bureaucracies where there is no incentive to train, much less pay, workers. the big bosses don’t understand the business: they only read the bottom line, and the middle bosses are more worried about looking good to the big bosses than they are about training up their replacements.
i suggested once to a big boss that they provide a career track for technical people that was separate from the career track for management. he said “that’s a good idea” and immediately forgot about it.
I keep going back to core questions, and people don’t seem to notice, so I will do it again:
“What is the purpose of a person?”
The purpose of people is to be people, to associate with and cooperate with people, to make more people, and to explore, learn, grow, understand and delight in their world.
Each advance in society and technology has, in part, acted to whittle away some more of those burdens not necessary to the work of being humans. Each change has made it more evident that humans pressed into the mold of brute service, are wasted shamefully, as would be a Stradivarius used to prop open a window sash, or a phoenix drawn and quartered and made into McNuggets.
To say that a person only has value to the extent he can be trained to fit into someone’s business plan is, if you are a religious person, simply demonic. Or maybe even if you aren’t religious.
Noni
Germany only established a federal Minimum Wage this year: http://www.wsj.com/articles/german-parliament-approves-minimum-wage-from-2015-1404386860
noni
i agree with you entirely (and i get more religious all the time, not because i fear for my immortal soul, but because “religion” is asking the right questions… not, of course, if you mean by religion Pat Robertson)
but still there is the problem of “the economy” (the household?)
and what do you do in a world where the “work” that can be done by ordinary people is neither sufficiently available (needed) nor good for a human soul (not the religious one, but the one that keeps you sane).
inevitably when we talk about economics we end up talking about money as if people didn’t matter. and i don’t really see an obvious answer.
i tend to think that things are better for “people”, as you see them, now than at any time in history. and to some extent…. i can hear the hate mail coming… the problem for “people” is to learn to be happy with less “money.”
this is something that neither the left nor the right understands. but it could be, as Shaw said, the problem with the poor is they have no money…. i don’t really know, but neither have i heard anyone take the question seriously.
Coberly, politician is obviously unskilled labor. That’s why politician’s spouses or children can be appointed to take their place when they die.
Wait until Republican party policies start laying off white workers in mass. Blood.
Here is the funny thing about minimum wage jobs and the “good jobs” and “skilled jobs”. They were all minimum wage jobs until the labor movement got some wins.
All those jobs were jobs the economy was producing because those were what was needed based on the economy We the people developed. It’s no different today other than the “good jobs” and the “skilled jobs” that were created from minimum slave like working condition jobs We decided to get rid of in exchange for greater gory promised. Now, we have to redo what our great grand parents fought and some died for to turn the current jobs into those that pay as the similar jobs of the past paid in that given economy.
Dan posting from a new e-mail? Cause you got kicked into moderation.