Shot in the Dark

Tag: Minimum Wage

  • Unintended Consequences, Again And Again

    Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: The starting pay for order takers at Minnesota fast food joints will increase to nearly $10 per hour next year. In completely unrelated news, fast food joints are replacing order takers with touch screens.  Customers like them better.  And they’re cheaper long-term. Proof that Liberals were right all along…

  • Who Saw This Coming?

    Well, nobody who plans on voting for Bernie Sanders, that’s for sure. Job creation tanks in cities with higher-than-average minimum wage mandates.

  • The New Consumer Math

    Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: In the olden days, waitresses got less than minimum and earned the rest in tips.  It created a moral obligation to tip: if you can’t afford the tip, you can’t afford the meal, you owe her a tip as part of her wages. Now that waitresses make $9.00 hourly,…

  • The Shallow, “Message”-Obsessed Left’s War On Women

    Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: New York bar charges women 77 cents on the dollar because . . . pay equity?  Great deal . . . for ugly women.   Pretty girls never pay for drinks.  And most of the wait staff is women, who work for tips, which are based on total tab, which…

  • Doakes Sunday: DIY

    Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: Starving workers demand living wage, but only from national chain restaurants and only in the New York City limits.   That’s okay, I already bag my own groceries and pump my own gas.  I’m ready for the fast-food touch-screen order menu.  I can enter “No. 5 Extra Value Meal,…

  • To Be Fair, You Were Warned

    Seattle minimum wage workers discover exactly what everyone has been telling them about huge minimum wage hikes all along; they destroy jobs.  Their jobs. http://redalertpolitics.com/2015/04/30/pizza-shop-worker-loves-seattles-new-15-minimum-wage-finds-cost-job/ image: http://cdn.redalertpolitics.com/files/2015/04/z-pizza-min-wage.png Pizza shop worker Devin Jeran was excited about the raise that was coming his way thanks to Seattle’s new $15 an hour minimum wage law. Or at least…

  • Reasons To Raise The Minimum Wage

    [SCENE:  John “FUZZY” Premisse, age 45, steps out behind a Burger King on a grimy industrial boulevard.  He is paunchy, his hairline a distant memory.  His face, doughy from decades of blue-collar food, is criss-crossed with stress lines.  In the background, the smokestacks of a high-tech incubator park belch smoke into the night sky, the…

  • All In A Day’s Work

    A high school friend of mine who lives in Texas, Jim, posted this on Facebook over the weekend: ———- Q: Why does world-famous violinist Joshua Bell make $1M for each performance? A: Because no one is stupid enough to pay him $2M – he’s just not worth that much. (Implication: what you do has value.…

  • Why Does The DFL Hate Poor Urban Single Mothers?

    I saw this idea in “Think” “Progress”…: Five state lawmakers in Minnesota have decided to take on the “Minimum Wage Challenge” and live off of a typical budget for a worker who makes the federal minimum wage of $7.25. …and I thought “I loved that skit the first time I saw a bunch of upper-middle-class…

  • Sophie’s Raise

    The Congressional Budget Office has released one of those rare financial reports that has both sides crowing and declaring victory. Who you believe – or weight the highest – likely depends on your economic literacy, politics, and what you do for a living. The headline on NPR  – “CBO: Minimum Wage Hike Could Boost Paychecks…

  • “Saving” Saint Paul’s “Soul”

    I’ve snickered about “E-Democracy” – the liberal-leaning non-profit that has been running email list-serve discussion forums for something like twenty years.  Awash in non-profit money, they’ve expanded (more or less) all over the place – but have pretty much been a “progressive” echo chamber for most of the past fifteen years. Which is, I suspect,…

  • Oh, We’re In The Very Best Of Hands

    Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: In 2012, St. Paul teen unemployment was 32%.   One-third of our young people could not find work, even at the state minimum wage of $5.25 per hour. On Friday, St. Paul Mayor demanded the minimum wage be nearly doubled, to $9.50. No employer could afford to hire you because you weren’t worth…

  • Non-Negotiable

    Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: Rush anticipated the President would call for an increase in the Minimum Wage to $10 per hour in the State of the Union address.  A caller said Republicans should see his $10 and raise him to $30.  That would make people to see how silly the Minimum Wage is…

  • Value

    (SCENE:  Mitch BERG sits down at a small Vietnamese cafe on University Avenue.  He unwraps a Bahn Mi Dac Biet and is sitting down to read the newspaper when Avery LIBRELLE sits down in Mitch’s booth).  LIBRELLE:  Hah, Merg!  The President sure pwn3d you wingnuts at his State of the Union the other night! BERG: …

  • State Of The State Of The Union

    I watched President Obama’s 5th State of the Union out at the Cinema Grill in New Hope last night, at a party thrown by Americans For Prosperity, hosted by Siri Freeh and some guys.  Main observations?  Well, first things first; this was the first time in a long time I’ve sat through an entire speech…

  • Keith Ellison And Barack Rex

    There are two ways to look at Rep. Keith Ellison’s statement to a group of minimum wage protesters last week; emphasis added by me: “We in Congress will try to raise the minimum wage. We got opponents on the other side of the aisle who say that there shouldn’t be no minimum wage. So, we…

  • Open Letter To Minimum Wage Strikers

    To:  All you folks “striking” for a $15/hour minimum wage From:  Mitch Berg, uppity peasant Re:  Money from nothing “Protesters”, Today, you’ll be out and about around dozens of McDonalds, Taco Bells, WalMart and other low-wage employers. I saw one of you on “Today” this morning; a cute, blonde, twenty-something single mother (what else?) and…

  • Worse Than The Problem

    Minnesota – the state of 10,000 “progressive” advocacy groups. And some of those advocacy groups run some very slick, polished, professional PR efforts.  Or – like the Alliance for a “Better” Minnesota, or “Protect” Minnesota –  at least loud and well-funded ones. And then there’s the Douglas County DFL.  The DugCo DFL runs a twitter feed…

  • Winkler Karaoke: “Making Bipartisanship Out Of Nothing At All”

    Ryan Winkler (DFL St. Louis Park) is beating the bushes around Minnesota to try to gin up a push for a massive hike in the minimum wage (and cobble together some positive name recognition to try to rescue his rumored ambition to run for Secretary of State after the avalanche of negative publicity he got…

  • Creating Two More Americas

    Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: Star Tribune says Keith Ellison (D-Minneapolis) is pushing for an increase in the minimum wage to $9.50.  This is so obviously idiotic I thought it might be the result of a blow to the head during his recent arrest while protesting in favor of illegal aliens.  But no, here’s…

  • Our Innumerate Overlords

    When Representative Ryan Winkler talks, people listen. And then the smart people snicker. He tweeted this yesterday: My favorite point in this op-ed: low wages do not cause poverty. http://t.co/jBfXzKYSiF. Only an economist could be so enlightened. — Ryan Winkler (@RepRyanWinkler) September 8, 2013 Of course, he had the point of the op-ed all wrong.…

  • Potemkin

    Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: Fast food protests for minimum wage hike. I wish reporters would ask more questions. Notice the language of the signs being held by the workers. Some are English, some are Spanish, but all are in the same colors and type font. Plainly, they were professionally printed specifically for this…

  • Chanting Points Memo: Our Spunky, Cute, White Underclass

    The fact is, I have a lot of questions about the minimum wage debate. Of course, the uncountably vast majority of people who are earning minimum wage are kids, or others who are just entering the workforce.  People who haven’t yet developed even the most rudimentary work skills – like showing up on time, much…

  • The Fix

    Glossy signs at well-fed protests scheduled with impeccable precision nationwide.  High-profile politicians pushing the idea in full view of their compliant media. Yep – the push to jack up the minimum wage is being pushed from every angle by the usual lefty suspects. And it may be the apotheosis of the liberal campaign strategy –…

  • Open Letter To Ryan Winkler

    To: Representative Ryan “Beavis” Winkler” From:  Mitch Berg, Uppity Peasant Re:  Your Minimum Wage Thing Rep. Winkler, Here’s what technology has to say about your minimum wage hike.  Read it and think.  That is all. PS:  No, it’s not.  I know you’re not paid to think about these things; yours is not to reason why. …