AEI republican has the solution to our high unemployment problem.

[Elwood P Dowd]

I wonder if a return to slavery would finally make them happy?


http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2010/09/pay-cuts-kevin-hassett-american-enterprise-institute.html

The economy's real problem is that you're overpaid

September 7, 2010 | 11:00 pm

Kevin Hassett thinks he has the solution to America’s employment problem: Pay cuts all around.
“The biggest problem with the labor market right now is that wages are too high,” Hassett, director of economic-policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, writes in his latest column for Bloomberg News.

He concedes that his proposal is the kind that is “perfectly at home in economics textbooks” but “so beastly in practice that nobody is willing to mention them.”

<snip>

He notes that since July 2007 the federal minimum wage has risen three times, to the current $7.25 an hour from $5.15, a 41% jump.
To bring down the 26.3% teen unemployment rate, Hassett says, Congress should scale back the minimum wage to $5.85, its level when the recession began in December 2007.

[IDemo]

1. That, and too few grade schoolers in the work force

Right, Mr. Hasshat?

[cloudbase]

2. He's right, of course, if you believe this guy:

The revised version of the American dream is articulated by Stanley J. Mihelick, executive vice-president for production at Goodyear. "Until we get real wage levels down much closer to those of the Brazils and Koreas, we cannot pass along productivity gains to wages and still be competitive."

[Confusious]

3. After trickle down

Any conservative idea about economics is total bullshit.

These people go on the idea of supply creates a demand, not demand creates a supply. To illustrate the point, if I had 1000 shit sandwiches, people would want to buy those shit sandwiches, just because there was a supply.

Now, while there might be some morons who would buy shit sandwiches, I'm not going to have a very big market even if I had 10,000 shit sandwiches.

Republicans think if you have 10,000 shit sandwiches, 10,000 people will want to buy shit sandwiches.

can you believe this shit?

[TheKentuckian]

6. The biggest problem with the country is that almost all our politicians

subscribe to this basic premise along with other insane fairy tales.

This has now become our national economic ideology. In light of history, particularly recent history it would seem Americans would be more likely to believe the world is flat than in trickle down, free trade, no regulation, you're on your own, greed is good, voodoo economics but we are a stupid people devoted to a demonstrably false state secular religion.

[Elwood P Dowd]

4. Imagine what the economy would look like today if we had put his plan in place

back in 2007. He basically wants us middle class and poor people to take a 20% pay cut. It would be a disaster that makes the current situation look like a walk in the park.

[w8liftinglady]

5. the tough thing...many minimum wage workers aren't teens

at least not here.

[Juche]

7. Deadbeat minimum wage earners earning $7/hr

Wall street paid themselves $150 billion in 2009. You could hire 10 million people for full time minimum wages just based on that.

Corporate profits are up by about $600 billion/yr. Income on the top 1% is skyrocketing. And they want to cut the working poor and the elderly?

Why anyone who works for a living would vote republican is beyond me. I guess they don't understand or care about economics.

The sad, despondent part is millions will vote for these ideas. How do you even begin to combat that? How do you handle living in a country where so many people think in times of economic strife and plutocracy we should tear into the poor and the elderly?

It is like being an atheist in Saudi Arabia. You don't fit in if you don't subscribe to the destructive mainstream opinions. But what can you do other than move?

[Rex]

8. There are so many things wrong with that idea that I won't waste

my time listing them...everyone knows what they are.

Repukes = is slavery was a political party it would have Tea Bagger written all over it.

[TwilightGardener]

9. "Wages are too high"...

I mean, what can you say when someone begrudges an employee's earning 7.25/hr in 2010. 25 years ago, I earned 3.35/hr minimum wage--and life sure ain't cheaper now. The next proposal is that anybody who earns anything above an indentured servant level is being paid too much.

[lib2DaBone]

10. The supply side has become so ingrained... its the consensus.

Sadly..

[HughBeaumont]

11. La la la LIIIIIEEEEEE!!!

Not that I would expect a conservative asshat like this to tell the truth about American wages. After all, it was his zeroes Reagan and Regan that first took America hostage on behalf of the corporations for the almost sole purpose of busting unions. Pig bastard.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/HughBeaumont/86