Skip to main content

Vote Buying And The Minimum Wage Gambit


For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction – Newton’s Third Law of Motion

The best way to persuade someone in Connecticut to vote for you is to buy their vote. Progressives, who nowadays take money from the middle class and give it to one-percenters, do this with a certain reckless abandon: Does anyone truly believe that that Aetna Insurance Company really needed the money given to it by Governor Dannel Malloy to survive?

Of course there are problems when the money to purchase a vote in Connecticut is taken from taxpayers who, given the parlous state of the economy after the Democratic hegemon has taken its share, are drowning in high taxes and liberty strangulating regulations.

To be sure, the debts of the average Connecticut taxpayer are considerably less than those of national taxpayers following four years on President Barack Obama’s economic death row. But almost always the state taxpayer and the national taxpayer are one and the same person, since federal and state taxes are paid out of the same pockets.


On the date of Mr. Obama’s inauguration, the debt held by the public stood at roughly $6.307 trillion, according to the Treasury Department’s "Debt to the Penny" calculator. The gross federal debt was about $10.627 trillion. Currently, the debt held by the public is $12.425 trillion, double the Bush figure, and gross federal debt is $17.410, a great leap forward in indebtedness.

Mr. Obama and the resourceful Governor Dannel Malloy together have discovered a means of purchasing votes without raising taxes to liquidate a debt that has doubled since Mr. Obama took office. You simply raise the minimum wage and, hesto-presto, you have purchased the woman’s vote. As represented by the figures above, the debt, like the gentle rain, evenly falls on both the just and the unjust, on both men and women in the workforce.

“Male voters,” according to one commentator, “generally speaking, are easy to figure out: raise my taxes I punch you in the nose. Malloy has raised taxes. Female voters, however, process information through a different filter. What’s my future with you in charge? What’s my standard of living? Is my kid safe in school? I’m a single mom with kids to feed, are you helping me?”

Of course, if you are a single WORKING mom attempting to bring up your child as best you might in Connecticut’s one party state, you may be inclined to wrinkle your nose at the prospect of a higher minimum wage.

Why so? Because you will find yourself in the male boat, generally speaking, casting about for noses to smash.

Why so? Because an increase in the minimum wage artificially raises the cost of labor, and politically induced increases in the costs of labor are either sustainable or not. If small businesses cannot sustain the cost increase, they will throw workers on the unemployment rolls, which could be costly to you, if you are a WORKING WOMAN who pays taxes and are not a welfare recipient.

Artificial – which is to say, political – increases in the cost of labor also drive up prices. And increases in prices cut into household budgets. Political increases in the costs of labor have the same effect on prices as taxes. If you tax a product and increase its price, you are driving nails into Connecticut’s coffin lid. People flee taxes like the plague, which is why Mr. Malloy is offering tax deals to large companies whenever they appear to be gazing longingly at the exit signs. United Technologies is only the latest recipient of middle class taxpayer largess. According to a story in a Hartford paper, “Tax Breaks Encourage United Technologies To Stay In State,” UTC might bolt Connecticut if it is not fortified by Mr. Malloy’s crony capitalist tax breaks, a measure that will permit the international multi-billion dollar company  to maintain its headquarters in the state for the next fifteen years.
                                                                                                                         
In the progressive crony capitalist bubble, where Newton’s Second Law of Motion has been permanently repealed, only ONE consequence per action is permitted – the consequence you desire. Do you want people making a minimum wage, some of whom are women, to vote for you? Increase the minimum wage and never fear deleterious unintended consequences. But for non-progressives who live in the real world, the unintended consequence occasionally is worse than the political solution designed to solve the problem.

The most serious problem in the United States for the last few decades has been the acceleration in spending, as indicated by the debt figures cited above. And that problem cannot be settled by politically popular expedients offered by progressive politicians whose chief – and some would say ONLY -- concern involves election to office.

If a man who has burned my house down appears at my charred doorway to offer me a free couch lost in the fire, I might be grateful for the couch, but I would still punch him in the nose – especially if I were a woman the arsonist might take advantage of because he thought I was less able than a man to calculate gain and loss.



Comments

Tom Blackstone said…
Nice article. I wondered what the political reasoning was behind this decision in Connecticut to raise the minimum wage.

At first, I thought it was an attempt to influence the elections for national office this November, until I found out that Connecticut doesn't have a senate seat up for grabs this year.

I didn't think about the fact that it might be an attempt to influence female voters for state offices, on the grounds that women are less rational in their voting behavior.

I think a lot of women are more rational than the politicians in Connecticut realize, but we'll see how it plays out.

Popular posts from this blog

The Blumenthal Burisma Connection

Steve Hilton , a Fox News commentator who over the weekend had connected some Burisma corruption dots, had this to say about Connecticut U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal’s association with the tangled knot of corruption in Ukraine: “We cross-referenced the Senate co-sponsors of Ed Markey's Ukraine gas bill with the list of Democrats whom Burisma lobbyist, David Leiter, routinely gave money to and found another one -- one of the most sanctimonious of them all, actually -- Sen. Richard Blumenthal."

Powell, the JI, And Economic literacy

Powell, Pesci Substack The Journal Inquirer (JI), one of the last independent newspapers in Connecticut, is now a part of the Hearst Media chain. Hearst has been growing by leaps and bounds in the state during the last decade. At the same time, many newspapers in Connecticut have shrunk in size, the result, some people seem to think, of ad revenue smaller newspapers have lost to internet sites and a declining newspaper reading public. Surviving papers are now seeking to recover the lost revenue by erecting “pay walls.” Like most besieged businesses, newspapers also are attempting to recoup lost revenue through staff reductions, reductions in the size of the product – both candy bars and newspapers are much smaller than they had been in the past – and sell-offs to larger chains that operate according to the social Darwinian principles of monopolistic “red in tooth and claw” giant corporations. The first principle of the successful mega-firm is: Buy out your predator before he swallows

Down The Rabbit Hole, A Book Review

Down the Rabbit Hole How the Culture of Corrections Encourages Crime by Brent McCall & Michael Liebowitz Available at Amazon Price: $12.95/softcover, 337 pages   “ Down the Rabbit Hole: How the Culture of Corrections Encourages Crime ,” a penological eye-opener, is written by two Connecticut prisoners, Brent McCall and Michael Liebowitz. Their book is an analytical work, not merely a page-turner prison drama, and it provides serious answers to the question: Why is reoffending a more likely outcome than rehabilitation in the wake of a prison sentence? The multiple answers to this central question are not at all obvious. Before picking up the book, the reader would be well advised to shed his preconceptions and also slough off the highly misleading claims of prison officials concerning the efficacy of programs developed by dusty old experts who have never had an honest discussion with a real convict. Some of the experts are more convincing cons than the cons, p