Local News and Newspapers | Our Economic Woes and How To Fix Them

Our Economic Woes and How To Fix Them

I was linked to this morning through a completely unrelated topic this morning to a letter to the editor and just had to do a post of my own. To make a long story short the letter’s author blames people having babies who can’t support them for most of our economic woes. In part I agree, but he is very naïve. First he states:

“Even high-school dropouts can get married and be self-supporting as long as they do not have children to support. They can flip burgers at McDonalds and earn roughly $2,000 a month. Later, they can get other jobs, learn marketable job skills and move on to become financially secure adults.”

I am not sure what reality he is living in, but when it comes right down to it. That is a full time job getting 40 hours a week in fast food for the guy flipping burgers and the girl at the counter. That doesn’t happen. $2000 bring home for a couple is above minimum wage and at 40 hours a week, even in an above minimum wage state like Florida where the letter originated.

Further problems go something like this. The average hourly worker at a fast food place, including the hourly management, are going to be lucky to pull 24 hours a week. Unless you are a high school kid who can’t work before school is out or live in a college town and are a college student, any sort of set shift is also hard to come by. It is not uncommon for fast food and retail to give you a day shift then an evening and call it your flex time whether you asked for it or not.

With low hours and no chance to find a second or third job to make up the difference even a couple with no kids often can’t make it on his proposed idea. Besides the financial strain on this couple, there are worse problems yet. In order even see each other assuming you could manage to get 2 or 3 jobs each to make that money you would have to work at the same places. This would mean always being around each other which isn’t good. The alternate is if you can’t work at the same places, then you will never see each other anyways, much less have time for the sex which might make time for those unplanned babies.

The naive little shit writing the letter is right in another area. He blames the right wing religious nuts for insisting on abstinence only education that doesn’t work. He even almost challenges their mantra of fiscal responsibility being at odds with sticking their heads in the sand, almost, but not quite. The more kids had by people who can’t support them the more money the government has to poor into social welfare system and the more the government eventually has to raise taxes. Any fiscally responsible person should be able to see family planning is a necessary option. Free birth control and rubbers is a lot cheaper than an abortion, which is a lot cheaper than a minimum of 18 years of welfare. When I say minimum, I mean for each child born and each of their unplanned pregnancies, because children of unwed mothers are ten times more likely to be in that same boat before than kids with married parents.

So what is the solution to all of these problems? First off states need to create legal protections for workers to keep them from being shafted by shitty hours. It is in the states interest to make sure people can work full time. This can be done by both direct and indirect legislation. I would prefer to give these corporate giants who look at employees as tampons used to fill a bleeding whole in the schedule. Offering tax advantages to companies that create jobs that have each employee working 35 hours or more a week during a 10 hour window during the day would be one way.

Directly legislating companies of a certain size to provide a certain percentage of their employees with full time work is another method which has both benefits and consequences. First you can guarantee a majority of the employees will not be receiving welfare and have full time jobs. Most of these corporate entities also have benefits packages which would need to be made reasonable as well in the legislation. The down side is a lack of competition and new construction in some areas which has pluses and minuses all its own. Construction is good for the economy, but usually bad for the environment. Every community having seven or eight big box stores selling the same thing can be good for the price of goods, but has a negative impact on the consumers and employees in the long rung being stretched to thin. Having so much competition also leads to long term survival issues with large abandoned buildings comes back to having environmental consequences.

Either way something really needs to be done and it is time that the government sticks its nose into big retail and fast food giants business as much as they are sticking it into the personal lives of the average every day citizen.

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