Stupid People and the Minimum Wage

Some jobs it just isn't worth paying people to do, even if it were nice they be done. In my shipping job we have to move pallets weighing up to 2000 pounds. Those heavy ones are moved with fork-lifts, but some not much lighter we have to move using muscle power and pallet jacks.

The floor is very smooth, polished concrete, because the wide, low wheels of the pallet jacks hang up on any tiny little obstruction. Like a little wood chip or lost nail off the pallets.

On slow nights we have time to sweep the floors, so the pallet jacks can move smoothly. Just one little wood chip can bind up the jack wheel and bring you to a dead halt. This costs time, efficiency and money. Plus it is exhausting to the workers having to back up the jack and then get it moving forward again. With a dirty floor this goes on all night long, over and over again.

It comes down to do we lose time sweeping, or lose time moving product on a dirty floor.

Hillary Clinton wants to raise the minimum wage to $9.50 an hour. How nice that she is concerned for the wages of the intelligent and sound bodied among us. She does not care about those of sub-normal intelligence and those with handicaps.

My company simply can not afford to hire anyone who is less than fully able. No company can.

I talk with everyone who is willing to talk with me, including the janitorial staff. Now, these people are not very bright. They are of low-normal intelligence. No amount of training and schooling would make them able to become high-powered executives. But they are physically and mentally 'normal'.

But what about all those people who are not even normal? They have two choices right now, either they work at some sort of fake charity job, or they don't work at all.

And no sputtering now about a 'living wage'. Few really dumb people have to support themselves. Either their families subsidise them, or the government does. But is it fair to them that they have to work at fake jobs their whole lives, never really contributing anything to their families or the greater society?

It does not take a really smart person to sweep floors. There are dozens of useful jobs going undone where I work. Jobs that it just is not worth paying anyone minimum wage to do, even though the jobs do have real value.

The minimum wage is a killer of hope for the less able among us. Have some sympathy, Hillary! Think for a moment of those who did not have all the advantages you have had in life. Show some concern for the weakest among us.