‹ Eulogy for Ted? Not willing to take the plunge •
Another dog-bites-man story. As economic models and past experience predict, the raising of the minimum wage has its worst effect on the young. So it has come to pass that the unemployment rate for young people is higher than for anyone else, and higher than it would have been. Especially at a time of scarce capital when they can hardly afford the lost leader of training costs, business is not going to hire those whose skill and productivity are the lowest, and whose services have been priced out of the market by a politically-oriented and ill-timed increase in the minimum wage. But, hey, it is the young who overwhelmingly supported Obama, so there is a bit of cosmic justice. The problem is that this also hurts the one-third of young voters who voted against Obamanomics. And this won’t end there. Long after older people are gone, the young will be paying for a discredited economic program that believes in putting the economy under the administrative capabilities of the DMV, growing the economy by raising taxes on productive vigor, eliminating debt and protecting the currency by creating long-term structural deficits, and assuring growth and jobs through a series of proposals to cut energy production and refining.
“The facts of life are conservative.” - Margaret Thatcher
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