2/13/2013

More On The SOTU

I've read the transcript of the SOTU address and my suspicions were confirmed: there was nothing new there. It was a rehash of his previous SOTU addresses with a few new bits and pieces thrown in. (I found that reading the address was far less annoying than listening to it. The President's cadence is off-putting and I didn't have to listen to the applause whenever he put forth yet another leftist promise right out of the Marxist Handbook.)

One thing I expected and did see was Obama's threat that if Congress didn't give him what he demanded he'd go around them. So I suppose we can expect yet another series of executive orders that thwart the will of the people because only Obama sees the light.

One thing I didn't expect was his pledge to raise the minimum wage...again. He seems to think that all he needs to do is raise the cost of entry level labor and everyone will be lifted out of poverty. Too bad he slept through his college economics course because if he'd paid attention he would realize that all raising the minimum wage will do is increase unemployment, and particularly teenage unemployment (which stands at 24% at the moment) as they will have been priced out of the market. Obama has also proven that he's no student of history, or at least economic history, because the last three times the minimum wage was increased unemployment went up. No one wants to hire an inexperienced kid to do a menial job that pays that much!

Should they raise minimum wage, what does Obama think will happen to small businesses and the prices of all kinds of goods and services? Does he really think businesses will just automatically absorb those costs? Obviously he does. Is he in for one hell of a rude awakening.