Dino(saur) Rossi advocates cutting minimum wage by $1.50/hour

[Union Thug]

From a Gregoire campaign e-mail received today:

"How will our Republican opponent help working families get through this economic crisis? Lower the minimum wage.

Can you believe it? When asked if he would support lowering the minimum wage by $1.50 an hour, he responded: “You bet!”

He didn’t stop there. “Minimum wage is really your first job. Not many people stay at minimum wage. Not very long. It's not meant to be a family wage. But it's meant to be an entry level wage. I think it should be looked at as such.”

Really? More than 350,000 are affected by the minimum wage in our state, and our Republican opponent would take money out of their paychecks every week.

In tough economic times, we need to support working families, not raid their paychecks.

Please contribute $25 today.

The more we learn about Republican Dino Rossi, the more it is clear that he is out of touch. He supports:


Cutting education to give tax breaks to multi-millionaires.

Deregulating our economy and healthcare system, ending protections for consumers.

Allowing pharmacies to deny emergency contraceptives to rape victims.

Unlike our Republican opponent, Gov. Gregoire believes working families on Main Street should earn a living wage. She also believes it’s not right to cut education funding to give tax breaks to the rich.

Gov. Gregoire supports protections for consumers and reasonable oversight in our economy. She will fight for working families.

We must reach out to undecided voters all across our state with these facts, but time is running out.

The first votes for governor will be cast in just over a week as voters mail in their absentee ballots.

That’s why your help today is critical."

[lifesbeautifulmagic]

1. these are the type of ads the Gregoire campaign should be running

on tv, they are so effective

The last time, Rossi was bankrolled by a bunch of downtown restaurant owners who wanted to eliminate the min wage for tip earners, with the upshot being that total incomes would have severely declined. The ads she ran with the single mother looking into the camera asking why she should work for 10,000 a year less (or whatever the figure was, and it was a lot) were very, very good.

[raysr]

2. I worked for a guy

once that was overhead as saying "wouldn't it be great if we could get them to work for nothing?" This is REALLY the way these people think. Rossi is bought and paid for by the "Building Assn."

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Wash. state Desk Jet]

4. Dino Rossi is a slum lord

And lets look at some other facts and figures. First off, do you know anything about the eighties ?

Back when yer dishwasher got $3.50 pr hour ! Many eating establishments hire x cons at a low wage, they except because a job is better than no job. Some eating establishments even get their dishwashers straight out of jail house work release programs. But thats working at the car wash blues !You do know the Chef runs the establishment right? And with a business to run ,it is the Chef who has the influence when calling the jail work release program in order get a damn dishwasher fast, because they do tend to forget to show .

So whats 40 hours at eight and how much does Dinno Rossi get on his monthly rentals ? And so if you never get ahead, such as savings, yer stuck ,ain't that so ?

How much moola did Rossi make in the eighties? Buying up those rental properties !You know ,with the grouth rate reguarding populational grouth and projections into that, knowing there will be a lack of housing.And don't even rule out that fact that slum lord relyed on the minimum wage workers stuck in that old rutt to fill those vacancies.And of course Rossi never had lunch with any of those corperate big wiggs that were making money hand over fist on hard time cheap labor wages. Not to mention federal tax breaks and kick backs,humm, hire three cheapees and get a ten grand kick back from the FED.

Dino Rossi said the basic minimum wage is supposed to be a entry level wage ,and nobody stays there for very long ! And nobody ever really gets wedged in there. And didn't he just get that right!And of course there are no cooperations that abuse cheap labor. Do you know about that? You know ,the big crack down which lead to the rise of the minimum wage ?
Straight to the bank he got it !$3.50 than it went to $5.00 than six than seven ,so now it's 8-9. depending upon what type of labor is preformed. On the ladder cost a dollar more ! But hay, whats a ladder right ? !

Should everybody take a pay cut so everybody else can work too ?

It's a tough question isn't it ?
It might even seem to make sense.

[eridani]

5. Peddle that nonsense somewhere else

What businesses of all sizes need is customers with discretionary income, and overall family wages have dropped a lot in real dollars from their peak in 1973. Henry Ford understood this, but conservative jackasses seem to have forgotten this knowledge.

http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/webfeatures_viewpoints_raising_minimum_wage_2004/

Despite the fact that contemporary economic research casts a long shadow of doubt on the contention that moderate minimum wage increases cause job losses, opponents still lead with this argument. This so-called “disemployment” argument is particularly difficult to maintain given two relatively recent developments in the history of minimum wages. First, the quality of empirical minimum wage research rose steeply over the last decade, due largely to economists’ ability to conduct pseudo-experiments 3. Such experiments, rare in empirical economics, typically utilize the fact that numerous states (12 as of today) have raised their minimum wage above that of the federal level. This variation between states gives researchers a chance to isolate the impact of the wage change and test its impact on employment and other relevant outcomes. As stressed in the Card and Krueger book cited above, these studies reveal employment elasticities that hover about zero, i.e., they solidly reject the conventional hypothesis that any increase in the minimum wage leads to job losses among affected workers.

Second, following the most recent increase legislated in 1996, the low-wage labor market performed better than it had in decades. The fact that the employment and earnings opportunities of low-wage workers grew so quickly following that increase continues to pose a daunting challenge to those who still maintain that minimum wage increases hurt their intended beneficiaries.

Recently, the Fiscal Policy Institute (FPI) released a study of the impact of higher minimum wages on small businesses 4. Their analysis focuses on various outcomes for businesses with less than 50 employees, comparing these outcomes between states with minimum wages above the Federal level and those at the Federal level. If the theory that higher minimum wages hurt small businesses is correct, then we would expect there to be less growth in such enterprises in states with higher minimum wages. In fact, as shown in Figure 5, the opposite is the case.