Left Behinds: Sometimes Pandering Works

Friday, April 21, 2006

Sometimes Pandering Works

OK, this was designed to pander to me and other inhabitants of the lower left corner, and I have to say, I am totally eating it up. "Hillary proposes that Congressional salary bumps should be matched in equivalent percentage amounts to increases in the minimum wage, which hasn't been raised in about a decade."

She is proving once again that she is very clever. Nobody has been willing to raise the minimum wage because of decades of neoliberal propaganda, but how can members of Congress argue that they deserve salary bumps but poor folks don't?

One of the nastiest neoliberal canards (another of those "you stupid hippies, we learned this our first week of Econ 101" bits of fallacious conventional wisdom) is that raising the minimum wage causes job losses for low-skilled workers. As one of the Politicker commenters noted, "Raising the minimum wage means people spend more. Rich people don't spend like the middle and working classes." Rich people hoard rather than spend, which is one of the many problems with trickle down voodoo economics.

Anyhow, I will be very happy if she sticks with this kind of populist policy pandering rather than the meaningless, totally phoney "congress is run like a plantation" variety.

Tags: news and politics, minimum wage, hillary, clinton

3 Comments:

At 4:12 PM, Antid Oto said…

The problem with Hillary is all about foreign policy. It's Democratic hawks like her that could enable us right into bombing Iran.
At 8:40 PM, Solomon Grundy said…

But she's going to be an imperialistic hawk regardless, but at least she's tacking to the left domestically.
At 3:05 AM, Antid Oto said…

In fact, I'm considering writing a post endorsing her yet-to-be-determined Republican opponent, on the theory that a less than overwhelming victory in the Senate race just might slow the Hillary presidential nomination tank. It would give me a good reason not to vote for her, anyway.

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Friday, April 21, 2006

Sometimes Pandering Works

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