The minimum wage and the law of unintended consequences
By Erick Posted in Congress | Georgia | job training | minimum wage — Comments (39) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
I sit on the Community Resources and Development Committee on the City Council of Macon, Georgia.
Last night, a lady came to brief us on a workforce development program the city runs. To summarize the program, the city uses federal dollars to place high school students in summer jobs. An employer gets a willing worker, the student gets off the street for the summer, and the city pays the student's salary so the employer does not have to do anything other than train and teach the student usable job skills.
It is actually not a terrible program. It gets several hundred high school students off the street during the summer, cutting the number of idle hands that might otherwise subsidize their summer with petty crimes. It also trains potential workers who are not college bound.
During the course of the lady's presentation she lamented the increase in the minimum wage -- this from a government bureaucrat who'd already blamed Bush for cutting other social program funding.
Because of the minimum wage increase, it is now more expensive to employ each student. Because it is more expensive per student, less students can be employed. The less students that can be employed through the program, the more students there will be on the street during the summer without jobs.
And that could very probably increase the rates of petty crime during the summer.
Way to go Democrats!
« Rep. Capuano's Newspeak for Censorship — Comments (5) | On Senator Kennedy — Comments (149) »
The minimum wage and the law of unintended consequences 39 Comments (0 topical, 39 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
Are you pushing the viewpoint that unemployment causes crime?
To summarize the program, the city uses federal dollars to place high school students in summer jobs. [...] It is actually not a terrible program.
You've got to be kidding me. The federal government is subsidizing jobs for high school students, and you feel warm and fuzzy about it?
Or in other words, you're trying to argue against one form of government meddling (minimum wage laws) by complaining that it's making another form of government meddling (subsidized jobs) less "effective".
The only point here is how government consistently shoots itself in the foot when it tries to solve social/economic "problems", and what you should be arguing for is an end to minimum wage laws and the termination of this ridiculous "workforce development program" that we're all being forced to help pay for.
Are you forgetting about that wonderful thing us conservatives like to call capitalism?
"The less students that can be employed through the program, the more students there will be on the street during the summer without jobs."
It sounds as though you think the only way kids can get jobs is if Big Government dolls 'em out. When I was 14 I got my first job--the government was not at all involved.
I think this program you describe has to go, as well as federal minimum wage.
I'm not forgetting capitalism.
The students in the program who need help getting placed due to their background and education. The government provides an incentive for them to be placed in the private sector -- the gov't pays their salary for three months and the employer commits to train the students, giving them job skills, etc.
Sometimes the government does have a role to play in providing a helping hand. I'd rather the government spend money on getting kids trained in private sector jobs than spend money subsidizing the unemployed who could work.
The students in the program who need help getting placed due to their background and education.
Details? Is this some kind of affirmative action style program, where the government is favoring a certain small subset on the basis of their being somehow, "disadvantaged"? Sounding more liberal all the time...
I'd rather the government spend money on getting kids trained in private sector jobs than spend money subsidizing the unemployed who could work.
What you meant to say is, you'd rather the government take money from every citizen and spend it on training some small subset of high school students, rather than take money from every citizen and spend it on some small subset of "the unemployed".
Or in other words, this socialist program is better than that one. Well, great. Not to mention the strong odor of "for the children".
Perhaps this post will serve as a good example and reminder of how settling for socialism-lite is going to get us no where else but to the same place liberals want to take us. Maybe slower, but the direction of the social policy being espoused by Erick here is identical: towards the government taking responsibility for job training and employment of citizens.
Everyone wants to deplore the system and demand we scrap it instead of seeing that we have this system, it is not going away, and we should at least try to set it up so its not failing.
Yes, yes, I agree with everyone in this thread. This is a terrible waste of money. We should neither have nor keep a system like this.
After all, when the GOP took over in 1994 they eradicated the Department of Education. We should do it again.
Oh, wait . . . . .
Garcia v. San Antonio, the USSC case that subjected public employers to the FLSA, is a graphic example of how bad cases make bad law. If these kids are only working in the core services of your city government, there is NO WAY they can be held to be engaged in interstate commerce, the hook by which FLSA coverage obtains. There were some pretty promising suits in the '80s by governments asserting that the US had no jurisdiction over their core workforce. They never got much past the District Courts and were brought to a screeching halt when Clinton came in. Typically, the iniative was not renewed under GWB. Sue the USDOL to remove your government from FLSA coverage. For adequate consideration, I'll lay out how to do it in detail.
In Vino Veritas
The program places them in private sector jobs and then pays their salaries so the private sector employer won't have to meet that payroll for three months.
Sounds like a govt handout to the private sector.
It just is. The Republicans didn't cut this program. The Democrats won't cut this program.
So, because the government is going to give out this money, let's decide where it is better spent:
(A) subsidizing the unemployed who can work but don't; or
(B) giving it to businesses to subsidize their hiring a student for three months and training the student to be a productive member of society.
Take your pick.
they're its employees. The private company is only acting as an agent to provide supervision and training during that three months. If they do go on to be employees of a private employer, then they would be covered by the FLSA.
In Vino Veritas
That lawsuit will happen. In a perfect world it would, but not Macon, GA.
private employers directly to teach the job skills! The 'students' would get paid by the employer thereby learning THE most important job skill: you have to work to get paid!!!!!
If we call this program "Government money going to private employers to get free employees in return for training", Hard Core Conservatives will hate it.
If we call it "An Education Voucher usable for Job Skills Training" it will be more popular.
We don't have to change the program...we just have to get people to see it for what it is: Outsourcing a part of the Educational System to the Private Sector. We must do this outsourcing because job skills are better taught by the private sector than in school.
The only caveat I have comes from my personal experience...I was part of such a program when I was a teenager. The jobs did not go to kids who were at risk of committing crimes...they all went to kids with political connections. Like any situation where the Government hands out money, there is the possibility of abuse. Gotta watch.
Here we focus on those schools that have either a high fail rate or are dedicated alternative schools, so it is rare to get a kid with a politically connected family.
But corruption is a problem we are trying to root out.
First let me say, I think this program is a fine thing. A relatively harmless small-scale government entanglement with the free market that ACTUALLY serves to undermine the effects of a HUGE and destructive government intrusion - that being the minimum wage requirement.
I.e., a virus in the Meddlesome Government Intrusion Program.
What I find even more delicious (and this is the stretched metophor) -- it's a concession that government job training (in the form of government-run primary and secondary schools) is inadequate in teaching young people the basic skills required to land and keep fast-food restaurant jobs. So then they farm out the training to private entities - the first smart thing they've done. God Bless America!
Unfair. Unbalanced. Unmedicated. -- IMAO
Thank you for seeing the point.
I'm not defending the program. I am pointing out that we're going to have some sort of program and this is a far better alternative to what it replaced, i.e. welfare payments and probably midnight basketball.
My friend Josh points out that the very nature of the gov't placing someone in a private sector job with government money opens the process up to all sorts of corruption and he is absolutely right.
But, this comes full circle: we get the money and it must be spent. It will be spent on subsidizing the unemployed or helping someone get a job and skills they can keep long after the program is not there for them.
We can fight all day about ending the program and that's fine. But good luck trying to actually kill it.
We might as well co-opt it, which is exactly what has happened here -- a small step away from the government.
Government-run programs that serve to subvert the bad effects of OTHER, worse programs - it's like big-government jujitsu. BGJ for short. And since shutting down any government program is IMPOSSIBLE, but changing its mission IS possible, I applaud this. I bet at the source of this, some smart covert conservative person was at work. But let's not out him/her.
I'd like to propose, just spit-balling here, a few BGJ programs that I think would actually benefit out society:
-- a government-paid program to send the FBI into the State Department, and root out, try, and convict those leftist treasonous bastards who keep leaking national secrets to the press for the purpose of undermining our nation, or soldiers, and our national policy.
-- ditto for the CIA. Another ditto for the Pentagon.
-- a program to hire demolition companies to destroy EVERY edifice in West Virginia whose name starts with "Robert C Byrd Memorial...."
Those are just a few, but you get the idea.
Unfair. Unbalanced. Unmedicated. -- IMAO
but I would not trust the FBI, you need an independent group of lawyers and investigators in the Justice department drawn from state government conservatives.
"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle
but my train of thought in the context was this - we're already wasting bazillions of bucks on the FBI, maybe we can get some actual good out of 'em.
Unfair. Unbalanced. Unmedicated. -- IMAO
Everyone in here wants to fixate on the program instead of the central point:
The Democrats love these social justice programs, but their actions on the minimum wage are hurting what they purport to love.
Yes, I suspect most people who read this would agree that a valid observation of the scenario is that government social programs tend to contradict themselves, wasting even more money. We have a lot of evidence that most (D)'s don't seem to be terribly bothered by this, in fact they tend to argue that if we only managed the government programs better, or if the government programs were changed in this way or that way, or if we added a new government program to fix the deficiencies in the other government programs, well, we'd all be better off.
You seem to be missing a more critical observation, which is that you're sounding suspiciously like those Democrats. Which probably isn't even as bad as this kind of defeatist thinking you engage in here, we'll "never" kill these programs, well, no I guess we wont as long as guys with a bullhorn like yours keep insisting that a somewhat-less socialist scheme than that embraced by the opposition is acceptable!
The Dems will NEVER let go of minimum wage, despite it's obvious toxic effect on small businesses. This program is a minor skirmish, a form of jujitsu - using gov't bloat to counteract much WORSE gov't bloat.
It's a little thing. You're hanging Erick on a small-city program that he can't get cancelled *even* with his chops as the mighty nationally prominent RedState Editor-in-Chief. Might as well make something decent out of it.
Unfair. Unbalanced. Unmedicated. -- IMAO
Clearly it's possible for me to over-react [wink]
Increasing the size of government in order to combat the problems brought on by increasing the size of government strikes me as counterproductive.
But recognize that the specific thing described here wasn't that - I took Erick's thesis to be that the minimum wage increase is bad because it's messing up some other socialist program that he evidently finds non-objectionable.
But to be fair to Erick maybe he was just mocking Democrats for giving us another example of government shooting itself in the foot - if he had expressed his philosophical opposition to socialist job training programs and stated his preference that such programs be terminated and those taxpayer funds returned to the citizens, because that is a proper goal of the conservative movement that must be attained, then I wouldn't find this piece so objectionable.
I get the whole "lets try as many ways as possible to point out something bad about democrats" thing, really. But this ended up sounding too much like, if you can't beat them, then just try to be a little bit less like them.
I'm investigating the hell out of it to root out corruption and if that kills the program, so be it.
But, while I agree with you that the very nature of these programs are detestible, I go back to the original response I made to you:
We have two options for how to spend this money -- and me being one of only two Republicans on Council, the money is going to get spent.
We can spend the money on the unemployed or we can outsource job training to the private sector.
Now, you choose because the actual, factual reality of the situation is that those are the two choices.
So pick one.
I'm happy to try to kill the program, but it'll die 14-1 on council.
Certainly I dwell more on the philosophical than the practical, and I don't envy your position. I understand why you'd choose the option you do. But consider doing both - expressing principled opposition but then making lemon juice from the lemon. One principled vote given with a well made argument for your position, you know, it could work to persuade people, in the long run.
You know, if you got elected to congress, you could not kill these programs.
The 1994 take over did not kill these programs.
We can, however, "reform" these programs.
I'd sure as hell try though.
But really, if the great fight between Liberalism and Conservatism is boiling down to a conflict between big socialist government and big socialist government that has a more positive outcome, then I guess I'd be surprised, it's not at all the way I had been looking at the situation.
Erik, you bring out a good point and I hear and respect what you're saying. However, one would think that the Feds, knowing well that wages had increased, would have appropriated more funds to the program. Regardless of the blame for gas prices for example, it takes more money in the budget for school buses, police cruisers, and so on. We're not seeing these units parked on the side of the road due to lack of funding so why would idle hands be placed on the street corners?
You didn't mention the exact program so I'm not sure of your options. Many states had already implemented a higher minimum wage so I'm sure they had received the same allotment as lower wage states. Did they make adjustments or hire fewer people? Can you not make adjustments such as the city or employer picking up part of the tab? I can assure you that I'll gladly take all the help you can send me for the summer at $.70 cents an hour to offset this increase and to be honest, I think I'd feel better to foot some of the bill than to get a free ride from the tax payer's buck.
Considering the political environment today, the game plan seems to be that it's advantageous to throw up ones hands and blame the opposing party for hurdles than it is to produce constructive legislation. That seems to be the problem with both parties.
Democrats: Siding with Communists and Socialists since before World War 2.
Since the Democrats retook Congress, we've gone downhill. The Democrats need a Republican President in 2008 (Especially a nice liberal one who will do everything they say) so that when their horridly stupid plans fail, the Democrats have someone to blame it on.
Independence is Freedom. Dependence is Slavery.
welcome to Redstate. We have been down this road, with a few, like myself, who fear that Johnny Mac will be the demo's perfect tool, we will get huge liberalism, and republicans will be blamed for it's failures.
Most on redstate do not agree with me.
"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle
I'm not so sure that most of RS disagrees with that - although you, as our token pure libertarian, perhaps run with that thought farther than most.
Unfair. Unbalanced. Unmedicated. -- IMAO
Lance I suggest you go read the posting rules before commenting, what you just did was a threadjack. Although what you said is very possible you need to respect the original purpose of the diary and not divert. But like I said you bring up a good subject, you just need to expand on it and do your own blog entry for it. have fun and welcome to the community.
"Land of the Free and Home of da Whopper" Peter Griffin...Family Guy
conform and celebrate diversity....or else!!!
I apologize, I was giving my view of this article.
I didn't intend to threadjack.... just giving my reaction to this artcle, specifically how the rise in Minimum Wage is causing to assorted other issues, like (in this case) fewer students helped in this program.
I do apologize if I was unclear.
Independence is Freedom. Dependence is Slavery.
RedState is a great community and you will have fun here. I didn't mean to sound like I was admonishing you, sorry if that is how it came across. Your comment was a little vague and thats why I suggested you expand and create your own blog. Either way welcome and definitely read the posting rules, they are very helpful in getting started. Also here is another great internal RedState link for help with blogs:
"Land of the Free and Home of da Whopper" Peter Griffin...Family Guy
conform and celebrate diversity....or else!!!
Thanks. I'll see what I can do about a blog soon.
Independence is Freedom. Dependence is Slavery.
hire as many people because they're budgets don't allow it. You've got a very blatant example of why the minimum wage actually hurts the people it was supposed to help. The private sector examples are a little less obvious, but the effects are still there.
Higher unemployment courtesy of the Democrats....
Socialism doesn't work. It looks nice on paper, but it's been tried and it's failed miserably every time (usually accompanied by widespread death and suffering).
Proud member of the V.R.W.C.
has created the market for illegal immigrants who are willing to work below the minimum wage. Without a minimum wage, employers would be free to pay market based prices for jobs. Those that would be lower than current minimum wage standards are creating incentives for employers to break the rules and hire people who are willing to work for less. Those situations are ripe for people who aren't a part of our labor pool to begin with.
Now also found at The Minority Report
I am sure that will be the next people powered step. And, hopefully these kids are offered health benefits for their same sex partners? Can't deny them that!