I can’t be the only person with employed adult children who cannot afford the rent for an apartment, let alone a car payment on top of it.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) said Tuesday that he’s “tired” of hearing discussion on the minimum wage and seemed to suggest that a higher minimum wage isn’t something to “aspire to.”
“I gotta tell you the truth, I’m tired of hearing about the minimum wage, I really am,” Christie said during an event at the Chamber of Commerce in Washington, according to a recording of his remarks by the liberal opposition research group American Bridge.
“I don’t think there’s a mother or father sitting around a kitchen table tonight in America who are saying, ‘You know honey, if my son or daughter could just make a higher minimum wage, my God, all our dreams would be realized,” he added. “Is that what parents aspire to for their children?”
You know who makes up the difference for the low wages being paid to our entry-level workers? Either the parents or the taxpayers.
It wasn’t this way when I was a young man and I’m tired of listening to Republicans dismiss this issue.
Are you?
Yes we need to pay all TPGOP politicians in office the current minimum wage. Let us see how long before it becomes a TPGOP issue as well.
AKA: “The Chris Christie Diet Plan”
“It wasn’t this way when I was a young man and I’m tired of listening to Republicans dismiss this issue. “
Me too, Boo. And I’d be happy if my oldest grandson had full time work at minimum wage instead of weekends only (flogging Pizzas, a suitable job after five years of student loans, Hmmm?). And the two younger ones don’t even have jobs.
When I was 21, I graduated college, got married, and took my Civil Service oath as a brand new junior engineer, all in the same week. I say took the oath because I took the oath, signed all the papers, then took a week of leave without pay for a honeymoon. Now, kids graduate find the jobs they expected are filled by an H1-B and Civil Service is gone replaced by contractors who also hire H1-B’s to do the nation’s business.
This.
I almost feel bad for all of the engineers coming out of schools thinking they’re going to get their dream job and live happily ever after.
Engineering is a bubble about to explode just like the legal field was a bubble that burst in 2007-2008.
Medical is just about the only way to go anymore.
Ahem:
we’re all chumps now, pharmacist edition
I once thought being a pharmacist might not be a bad way to go.
Then I had, for the first time in my life, to fill a prescription at my provider (kaiser). After watching them for a half hour you could not pay me enough to do that job. Just a horrible non stop assembly line of tedium. I would kill myself.
And that is the future of so many jobs that used to be desirable. Assembly lines.
My carrier was tough. A framing contractor/ carpenter / finish carpenter… You run hot and cold. We call it the three ‘D’s.. Dirty, Dangerous, and Difficult.
But it’s always interesting and rarely tedious.
.
There are pharmacists that are not named Patel?
At our local Jewel Osco there are five pharmacists, all named Patel and they tell me none are related.
Talk to your doctor. They are all falling prey to the Medical Groups, more hours, more patients, lower fees.
Well, doctors through the AMA were instrumental in defeating socialized medicine when Truman tried to put it on the table. And doctor groups investing in diagnostic centers that charge outrageous fees have become quite wealthy. It’s long been the lowly general practitioners and GYN docs serving a low income population that have had comparatively low income.
The so-called HMO (corp med and insurance company managed) assembly line medicine is now a generation old. What has that created? Too few GPs, more imported docs (brain drain from poor countries such as Liberia), and more and more high-priced specialists. Defying basic Econ 101 as to supply and demand, more cardiologists and radiologists has led to increasing charges for their services.
I don’t think my doc was born when HST was President. She’s no spring chicken but I think she’s maybe twenty years younger than me. That would mean she doesn’t even remember JFK. She never talks politics but I suspect she’s a Democrat unless she’s a very rare Republican who believes in social service and that we actually have a community.
Just as some USians opposed GWB’s military campaigns in Aghan and Iraq, not all doctors opposed socialized medicine from HST’s days and forward. But the majority still opposed. A shame really since IMHO most GPs spend too little time with patients, too much time on billing paperwork, not enough time staying medically up to date, too much time and/or deference to drug and medical equipment sales reps, and are somewhat underpaid (that varies from a little to as much as 50%).
Generally true and the HMO’s/Medical Groups are making it worse.
I have to talk with her about Medicare. When I first went to her she said she took traditional Medicare but not Medicare “Advantage”. Now, two mergers later, I get a letter from the new corporation listing the Medicare Advantage plans they belong to but also has a paragraph saying they do not accept any Part “D” or supplement plans. I intend to keep my FEHB as my Drug/Supplement plan. It will then be secondary to Medicare. I have to find out if they will take it or if I need to find new doctors.
And who paid for his lap-band surgery? NJ taxpayers, I’m sure.
Special secret friends who like his choices on where to develop real estate?
As with most of the fascists and their enablers, I’ll smile when that fat fuck keels over.
Sorry, brash but the truth. People like Christie don’t deserve to breathe our oxygen.
Not to mention the stimulus to our economy. No the fatman doesn’t want to hear it. Lets help Mcdonald’s, Burger King and the rest be responsible “citizens.” Raise the minimum to $10.10 an hour.
I’m trying to understand that Republican logic, which Christie isn’t the first to use, about how raising the minimum is bad because $10 isn’t something people should “aspire” to. They don’t explain it, I guess because it has a dog whistle element, but it seems to be an “entrepreneurial” thing that if bad, lazy people were paid $10 they would be satisfied and not want to become entrepreneurs, but giving them $7.25 (or preferably less) will keep them hungry and make them all start businesses, somehow, presumably with the credit nobody will extend them. I’m not expecting it to make any sense, just trying to figure out the satisfaction they get in saying it.
That’s essentially what they’re saying, but it goes a little further to include that if we raise the minimum wage to $10-20 an hour then people will be like “I’m just fine with this job and have no reason to try to do anything other than fast food.” So not just starting businesses, but doing other jobs as well.
To which I say, who gives a fuck, and why do you care if people are fine with those jobs? Do they not deserve respect because it’s fast food?
Let’s just say that this does indeed happen. That so many people will be stuck with their “minimum wage McJob” and be happy right there. If you think it’s so great, plenty of people will migrate to those jobs. And when they do, “better paying more skilled jobs” will suddenly open up, and to attract workers back, they must…gasp!…increase wages to attract talent!
It’s convoluted and makes no sense, but if you peel back the onion another layer, it comes back to the same old bullshit: fuck the workers
It’s just their usual handout/welfare logic. It’d be bad because it would be rewarding people for just showing up, instead of making ’em work harder for it, implicitly “like we did.” Work harder where, for what? That’s beside the point.
This is how they understand the entire social welfare state: gifts to the lazy (like Them) at the expense of the productive (like Us). That’s what every Republican believes, and deeply. Even, perhaps especially, the ones who benefit from the social welfare state, who figure that they earned their perks through hard work and virtuous suffering, while America Today doesn’t know what hard work is, etc.
It’s even worse, because it you raise taxes by a few percentage points on the .1%, you’re destroying their incentive to “create jobs” or “grow the economy”. In their world, taking a decent wage away from poor people magically motivates them to self-bootstrap with resources and opportunities they don’t have. But when you prevent a master of the universe from buying a 75 foot yacht instead of a 50 foot yacht, or buying a third vacation home or something, or, most likely, simply parking their money somewhere, you’re destroying their motivation to deploy their awesome entrepreneurial talents.
He gets $175,000.00 per year to play bully and obstruct traffic. But folks who, you know, provide useful services don’t deserve a modest raise.
Look in front of you, and behind you, in the next supermarket line you’re in.
In most neighborhoods, one of those two people fundamentally agrees with Christie.
Two of those two, in some neighborhoods.
And that’s a problem. A social democracy requires a critical mass of social democrats…
He should go eat a double cheeseburger, he’ll feel better.
.
With bacon.
I am tired of hearing everyone bleat about the minimum wage too, that’s why I want to raise it and index it to inflation so it won’t need to come up much any more.
Your move governor east coast asshole.
In answer to your last question: Yes, damn tired.
Why aren’t the majority of New Jerseyites?
Have you seen his favorables lately? They’re finally going down, and might even be underwater. But remember two things. The TradMed, and even local media, is in the tank for him. Also, plenty of “Democrats,” like George Norcross, are more than willing to play along with Christie because they’re corrupt tools who hate what the party supposedly stands for.
It’s like the people who want to trash medicare or social security. All that does is create a giant new “tax” on the kids of people who would have gotten these benefits.
I swear half the people in this country must really suck at chess. They can’t think ONE move ahead.