Democrats Take the House

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

False shibboleths both, DanaC, and government-mandated increases of the cost of employing a worker mean it's too expensive to hire anybody! That is the reason European unemployment is thrice that of the American. It won't come down until the government-imposed costs of employment go away.

Yes, there are government imposed costs of employment, but it's not minimum wage.... it's not workers pay that's the issue.

It's the health and safety standards that the government imposes. It's the environmental standards the government imposes. It's the employer matching contributions the government imposes to cover their mismanagement of the SS funds.
The worker gets some benefit, and the country gets even more, from these regulations on any company doing business in the US.

The reason we have these government regulations is we as a nation decided that we shouldn't make our citizens work in sweat shops where life and limb are in jeopardy. Businesses shouldn't be fouling the water and air in the name of profit. That's why businesses have done an end run and gone offshore where they can maim and kill their workers with impunity. Where they can pollute the water and air without regard for the natives.

Given their way, Big Business would have the whole country looking like Pittsburgh, PA, in the first half of the last century, except a few places where only they could go to live or play.

I don't think those people that were incinerated in Nigeria would care about a smokestack nearby, but Americans don't want to live that way.
But since Big Business didn't give a shit, the government had to. We all know there is no slower or more expensive way to accomplish any goal, than the US Government, but the capitalists forced that upon us.