Raising the minimum wage not answer to easing poverty
I respond in opposition to the opinions of your Guest Editorial written by Bill Zechman in Sunday?s edition.
Zechman, a Democrat, is a 1st District representative on the Warren County Commission. All due respect to Zechman, but his vicious left-wing politics are extremely obvious.
I don’t have a dog in the minimum wage fight, and I am not an economist nor an expert in wage principles and I highly suspect neither is Mr. Zechman. There were many deceptive political spins in the editorial that must be rebutted.
Zechman painfully patted himself and the Warren County Commission on the back for rejecting a pay raise and then went after Congress for giving themselves a raise. This I totally agree with. The commission, the state house, and Congress have voted themselves a very comfortable economic position.
It was staggering to read his understanding of basic economics and wage principles. It was deceptive to tie a congressional pay raise to the minimum wage. To compare congressional pay to minimum wage is ridiculous.The writer advises us there are 8 million working Americans being held in deep poverty because of the $5.15 per hour wage. Studies indicate the vast number of those making minimum wage are neither heads of households nor poor.
Zechman’s insinuation that an increase in the minimum wage is a pay raise for the working Americans is simply ludicrous and defies logic. Economic experts from academia to former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan agrees that an increase in the minimum wage results in fewer job opportunities for entry-level work.
It was over the top for the writer to quote CNN’s leftist TV anchorman Lou Dobbs as a defender of non-interference in economics and as expert on the subject.
If you have any doubt which politics is being promoted in this editorial, re-read the editorial noting the other insinuations.
1. The formality or the illusion of periodic elections.
2. Despite our representative government the honest, sincere, thoughtful, intelligent, passionate poor people have no voice in decision making. Note: If you voted, you were in on the decision making process.
3. Why mention only Tennessee’s two senators as being among the wealthiest Americans? What did the personal wealth of our senators have to do with anything? Why was the personal wealth of Kerry, Kennedy, Zechman, et.al. excluded?
4. What was the writers? intentions by implying our senators, Frist and Alexander, were buying their elections?
5. Public financing of elections sounds socialistic to me. Note: Socialism has failed everywhere it has been tried.
Sam Allen
308 Hickory Blvd.
McMinnville