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.