Oh, so Arizona's Governor Jan Brewer was in the NYTimes Magazine this week.
A lot of people, even some of your supporters, hire low-paid undocumented workers. Do you think they would be willing to pay minimum wage?
There are plenty of people to mow your lawns and clean your houses at a reduced rate.
When you said “plenty of people” did you mean plenty —
Plenty of citizens of the United States.
I wish the interviewer had pressed her a little (okay, it's apparently very hard to press Jan Brewer--she's a slippery lady, so I will cut the interviewer some slack) to state outright what she believes. Because if I'm reading this correctly, Jan Brewer believes U.S. citizens should work for less than minimum wage. Jan Brewer also probably believes that people should should be able to hire others and not have to bother with pesky details like paying taxes or Social Security for employees, worker's compensation, or even covering them under the homeowner's insurance if the dog bites an unemployed American citizen you hired to clean your house. Although she'd probably all for the people doing the work getting the book thrown at them for evading taxes.
Well, that's nice. I hope she's also down with the U.S. citizens living off the grid and not paying taxes and their less-than minimum wages, like undocumented workers do. I don't know if wanting the destruction of America the lazy way, through non-participation in the social and governmental contract, befits a state governor.
As an additional datapoint from the land of unemployment/underemployment, they had about 1,000 applications for positions at my new retail job. They hired 37 people. And these are good jobs--$10.50 an hour, eligible for benefits, including healthcare, after 3 months, 40 hours a week, full-time work. I know I'm lucky. But guys? I made $10 an hour my first job out of college in 1997.
1 comment:
I know what you mean about making the same money now that you made 20-some years ago. I'm in that exact same boat; it seems you keep taking a job just to have a job and it becomes easier to lower your expectations. There's even a part of me that sometimes has a hard time believing I could still deserve the highest salary that I was getting before. This must change.
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