$15.00 Minimum Wage?

I really thought this through and hope you read it. I don't expect to change you viewpoint. That's not my job. Time and experience will teach you just like it teaches everyone. What I WOULD like is to show you that others aren't evil schemers or cruel or unkind because we see a different solution to a problem. I hate, h.a.t.e. HATE this one-sided blind arguing.  It isn't Us vs. Them, no matter what we've been taught to believe.

Hot button issues are designed to incite division.  The only reason it works is because the problem is real.  Pretend you are in my kitchen having a nice conversation.  Perhaps it will help to stop that "Us vs. Them" mentality, and possibly end this horrible divisiveness and hatefulness.

Let me start by saying, if you were at my house I'd offer you coffee or tea and we'd sit at my kitchen table and eat toast and smile a lot and joke and probably like each other, because we're decent folks. I'm a roundish gramma lady who loves to chat and feed people, and I make folks comfortable. I am kind, fairly intelligent, most who know me would probably tell you that I'm very nice. I'm just a no nonsense, cut through the crap kind of a person.

So, on with it.  I strongly disagree with an enforced $15.00 an hour minimum wage law as a solution to economic struggle among our nations' poor.  Generally skipping past the financial problems and inflation and whatnot, lets get straight to the conflict point: caring and kindness

No one is saying that the wage to cost of living gap isn't growing or that life isn't a financial strain on some more than on others.  Discerning the situations on a personal level and offering help to people who sincerely need it is generally not a problem for anyone from either "side" of the argument.  No decent human being wants to see others struggle under prolonged financial pressures.  I simply don't see an inflated minimum wage as a viable solution in any of the arenas that will be affected by enacting such a law.

I believe that people, like butterflies, or baby chicks, no matter how they struggle or how it hurts our hearts to see their hardship and seeming agony, if we help them escape the trials of emerging from their shells we doom them to catastrophic failure that they will never overcome. It looks so impossible, but they can do it. It's how they are made and it is necessary to their existence.

People grow, become strong, and get the beautiful opportunity to experience life and have a wonderful sense of accomplishment through hardship and struggle. Forcing others to intervene is a way to pass the buck and salve pricked emotions without doing anything of lasting value to helps anyone including yourself. In my mind, it's a terrible thing to do to them, to yourself, as well as being a bad thing to do to those who are forced to pay for it, which, by the way, is not going to be the corporations.  It's going to be you and me, the consumers.  I see it all as unhelpful, unkind, and unjust.

If we personally involve ourselves and our OWN resources in charity, which we are all responsible to do, we will quickly learn where the line between charity and entitlement is drawn in our own minds, and then no amount of argument or shouting will sway our conviction. As long as we aren't hands on and invested personally, we have no skin in the game and it's easy to point fingers and look accusingly at other people, but we CAN NOT pawn off our personal responsibility.

We can never legislate our responsibility for personal charity away. We will always have the poor among us, and we will have to see it and deal with it on a personal level. To try pass some legislation to relieve us of the burden of responsibility only further involves government into corporations and further restricts individual liberty.  Government + corporations = bad.  I would rather keep them totally out of it.

I hear all the cacophony about, "it's not charity, it's about living wages..." but, actually,  it is about charity.  It's about misplacing your charitable feelings of wanting to help someone by forcing someone else to do it instead.  That is a vicious and never ending cycle.  It will never be enough to fulfill you or satisfy them.  Ever.

"But, the evil corporations!"  No doubt corruption is rampant and profit to the top levels and the politicians is hair raising.  I doubt we know the depths of it all, but who will hire you if not those who can create jobs?  Will someone magically create employment if actual people and their businesses stop employing you?  Even if those people are scamming and cheating, or whatever they may be doing, they are providing millions of jobs that will not be replaced if we "rid ourselves of this evil!"

"It's about appreciating employees!"  Well, firstly, employees agreed to the terms when they accepted the conditions of hire.  Secondly, maybe a little thankfulness for a job and some appreciation to the employer is in order.  Not all appreciation has to be directed at the employee.  In fact, that's a fairly recent view to have.  Thanklessness is, in my view, the biggest part of the problem anyway, but that is a different blog for a different day.

Change you viewpoint and attitude about your job.  Be the guy people LIKE to be around.  Anyone can stand around and gripe about their job, and draw a crowd doing it.  Contrary to popular belief, that crowd, those numbers, do not represent a movement and do not indicate the rightness of their argument.  It usually represents the easiness of the path.  There is no strength or growth there.

Some NEED charity, and are usually the last to say anything, let alone DEMAND.  There is no experience like providing that to them for y.o.u.r.s.e.l.f.  There are many life lessons in giving and receiving charity.  Dot miss out on either. 

Some seek an easy path: help breaking through their shell. Don't help them. It may seem cruel or uncaring but quite the contrary. It will make matters worse.  They simply need to work: hard and long.  Work, think, learn logic and reasoning, break through and grow up.

Still others are horrible, freeloading layabouts, masterfully scamming the system and robbing hardworking taxpayers.  Whether few or many is debatable, but they are there and anything they are receiving as a handout, a charitable gift, or an entitlement needs to be stopped.

Also, money is rarely the real issue.  Again, a different blog for a different day.

The moral of the story:  A kind heart is manifest in many ways. Please don't assume that people aren't kind because they see solutions in different ways.

My 2.

GOOD TIMBER
by Douglas Malloch

The tree that never had to fight,

For sun and sky and air and light,

But stood out on the open plain,

And always got it’s share of rain,

Never became a forest king,

But lives and dies a scrawny thing.

The man who never had to toil,

To gain and farm his patch of soil,

Who never had to win his share,

Of sun and sky and light and air,

Never became a manly man,

But lived and died as he began.

Good timber does not grow in ease,

The stronger the wind, the stronger trees

The farther sky, the greater the length

The more the storm, the more the strength,

By sun and cold, by rain and snow,

In tree and men good timbers grow.

Where thickest lies the forest growth

We find the patriarchs of both.

And they hold counsel with the stars

Whose broken branches show the scars

This is the common law of life.