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Weekly Newspaper and Travel Guide
for Pecos Country of West Texas

Opinion

Friday, January 12, 2007

Smokey Briggs

Sage Views

By Smokey Briggs

Alien space bats and
the minimum wage

Do any of you remember back when George W. Bush, affectionately known to me as “The Stickhorse Cowboy,” was running for president about seven or eight years ago?

Maybe my memory is getting faulty, but I would swear I remember him talking the talk of a fiscally conservative Republican.

I remember promises to the tune of lowering taxes, lowering government spending, and lowering government intrusion into our lives.

I also remember Al Gore; and I am pretty sure he promised the exact opposite. Al promised to make us safe, more or less, by taking all of our money, and then giving it back on an as needed basis with government flunkies deciding who needs what.

I went for Mr. Stickhorse since all Mr. Gore’s campaign speeches needed was a “Thank you Comrades,” at the end to fit in perfectly in communist Russia.

So, here we are seven years later and judging from the state of this nation one of two things happened.

Either President Bush is a lying Connecticut-bred, Yankee, polecat, or evil alien space bats, with much more advanced technology than us, and a really sick since of humor, zapped Bush and Gore during a debate and transmogrified them into a single living creature with two bodies but only one brain.

That would explain a lot really. It would explain why Al Gore walks around acting like he is the president, and it would explain why Mr. Stickhorse runs this country like a brain damaged and very drunken Russian commissar.

Or, it could be that Mr. Stickhorse is a lying, Connecticut bred, Yankee polecat who will say anything to get elected.

I don’t guess it really makes any difference - the results are the same.

And that is why he will happily sign the coming minimum wage law that will raise the minimum wage to $7.25 - and further push America to ward absolute economic collapse.

Of course there are several reasons the so-called fiscally conservative Republicans are going to roll over like the cur dogs they are on this one.

Probably the biggest reason is that they really have no choice. If the minimum wage is not shoved down our throats, a lot of people at the lower end of the wage scale are going to start to smell the rat that is inflation.

At the current actual rate of 10 percent or more, the lowest wage earners are going to be hit the hardest and the fastest as prices continue to escalate out of control.

Think the government is not lying to you about the real rate of inflation?

Ask yourself this: What is inflation? It is higher prices, nothing else.

Now, why do prices rise? There are three possibilities: first, there is a shortage; second demand went up, but supply did not; and third, somebody is printing more money, which always makes money less valuable.

Guess what? There is no great shortage of consumer goods from wheat to gasoline and demand is not soaring either. That only leaves choice “C” folks - the government is printing money.

And, as dollars become less valuable, they buy less, and prices go up accordingly.

Don’t believe me - compare what you paid five years ago for something compared to what it costs today.

That’s called inflation folks and it’s running at 10 percent or more each year. (Now, that is a tax, but we can talk about that later).

So, as inflation is boiling up, our elected twits have to do something to try to keep us from feeling the bite too sharply - and a minimum wage hike is about the only way - other than to stop printing money and they are not going to do that.

But, there are other cool reasons why President Stickhorse and company wants to see this go through just as bad as their near-communist brothers in the Democrat party.

For one thing, they are not spending their own money, so what the heck? It is easy to be generous with other people’s money - and it is your money they are handing out.

Don’t believe me? Who do you think is going to pay for this 40% hike in wages?

Employers?

Ha!

Not on your life. Business does not pay added costs and taxes. They pass them on to… drum roll please … you! Every thing you buy is fixing to jump in price by the exact percentage this costs business.

So, what you are getting, if you are not making minimum wage, is a pay cut, and what the minimum wage folks are getting is a sham raise, because within a couple of months their salary will not buy a dime’s more than it will today.

And if you are not earning minimum wage today, you may be when this goes through, because you can bet businesses are not going to pop everybody else on the payroll with an extra 40% raise.

Better yet, for our elected swine, this actually constitutes a pay raise for the government.

Think about it. By the time you add up Medicare, Social Security and all the other withholding - the government grabs about 25 percent of your paycheck right off the bat.

So, today, a minimum wage earner makes $206/week and the government takes $51.50. With the minimum wage at $7.25, the minimum wage worker will make $290/week, and the government will skim $72.50.

That’s 21 bucks per week multiplied by every minimum wage worker in the nation.

So, President Stickhorse will sign this idiocy and his Republican buddies will politely clap after a certain amount of staged protest for the benefit of conservatives who think Republicans are their friends.

And you know, why not? The more I look at it, the better it sounds.

By mandating higher wages, everyone will have a better standard of living - Right? We’ll all be better off. More people will live above the poverty level. Life will be great.

So, the only question I really have, is why is Bush and Congress being so stingy. Let’s really make things better for everyone - lets raise the minimum wage so that we can all live well.

I suggest $25/hour. That way, the working poor will make $52,000 annual salary.

Shoot, that’s good money - I do not care who you are. Poverty will be wiped out. If government ordered minimum wages are not a sham then we will all be happy and prosperous.

Right?

And, maybe alien space bats will send us stupendous technology that simply makes whatever we want when we wish for it.

My money is on the space bats.

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