{"id":39817,"date":"2013-11-15T12:00:02","date_gmt":"2013-11-15T18:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=39817"},"modified":"2020-09-20T21:37:50","modified_gmt":"2020-09-21T02:37:50","slug":"worse-than-the-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=39817","title":{"rendered":"Worse Than The Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"

Minnesota – the state of 10,000 “progressive” advocacy groups.<\/p>\n

And some of those advocacy groups run some very slick, polished, professional PR efforts.\u00a0 Or\u00a0– like the Alliance for a “Better” Minnesota, or “Protect” Minnesota – \u00a0at least loud and well-funded ones.<\/p>\n

And then there’s the Douglas County DFL.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The DugCo DFL runs a twitter feed that’s always a\u00a0useful barometer for whatever the left end of the DFL’s intellectual bell curve is “thinking”<\/del> has been told by the people paid to do their thinking for them. .\u00a0<\/p>\n

This went out on Twitter <\/a>the other day:<\/p>\n

@dc4DFL: Australia has a Minimum Wage of $16.88 per hour. Minnesota needs to seriously raise ours. #mnleg #stribpol<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wow.\u00a0 “Seriously”.\u00a0 That sounds like quite the imperative.<\/p>\n

So let’s compare and contrast.<\/p>\n

The unemployment rate for Minnesotans aged 16-24 is 11 percent<\/a>.\u00a0 Note that in Minnesota (and most of the US), full-time students aren’t considered “in the labor market” in the same sense as someone working for\u00a0a full-time living.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And in Australia?\u00a0\u00a0 It’s 19% “not fully engaged<\/a>” (neither working nor studying full-time).\u00a0 And if you compare apples to apples – drop full-time students from the “work force” – then close to a third of Australians between the ages of 15-24 are neither working nor studying full time. It’s a little under a third if you count only Australians from 20-24.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bear in mind (and I say this more for the benefit of people who’d read what the DugCo DFL says seriously than for most of this blog’s audience) Australia’s economy isn’t currently mired in one of the most dismal recessions in their history.\u00a0 Their growth was hit by the global financial crisis over the past six years – but not like ours.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So – even in a relatively healthy <\/em>economy, Australia’s unemployment and underemployment among younger, lower-skilled workers is much higher than in Minnesota.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of course, Australia’s high minimum wage is one of the products of the Labour government…<\/p>\n

…that was just tossed at the polls <\/a>two months ago.\u00a0 While I saw no evidence that the minimum wage was a pivotal issue, an artificially high minimum wage is part and parcel of the whole raft of “progressive” policies that stagnate economies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Uncle Ryan Winkler might want to find himself some smarter stenographers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Minnesota – the state of 10,000 “progressive” advocacy groups. And some of those advocacy groups run some very slick, polished, professional PR efforts.\u00a0 Or\u00a0– like the Alliance for a “Better” Minnesota, or “Protect” Minnesota – \u00a0at least loud and well-funded ones. And then there’s the Douglas County DFL.\u00a0 The DugCo DFL runs a twitter feed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[283,213],"class_list":["post-39817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy-and-the-market","tag-minimum-wage","tag-winkler"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39817"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41972,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39817\/revisions\/41972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}