Minimum Wage

Lately, there are a myriad of issues and concerns arose regarding minimum wage.  As of January 2014, minimum wage in the state of Florida is $7.93 an hour (not counting tipped employees).  Due to the recent upsurge of liberals in office continuously fighting to raise the minimum wage, some conservatives are being seen as out of touch, only looking out for the rich, or even worse, nonchalant about the strife of hardworking Americans.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Instead of just refuting these erroneous statements, let me first explain what I feel the paramount conflicts are:

1.     Liberals claim that minimum wage is not enough for the public to adequately provide for their families.  This is where one of the first issues lies. People should not be supporting their families on minimum wage; rather, minimum wage-paying jobs should be utilized by the younger population (such as high school and college students) to earn additional spending money.  Instead of concentrating on increasing the minimum wage so people could provide for their families, let’s concentrate on increasing their earning potential.  Instead of just giving people an additional couple of dollars an hour, let’s instead concentrate on utilizing that money to improve people’s marketable skills and even more importantly, to bring jobs to the community.

2.     If we increase the minimum wage, people will earn more, therefore eradicating poverty.  This seems pretty straight forward: $2 more an hour will equate to $80 more a week, or $4,160 a year.  However, it is not as simple as that.  Once businesses are required to increase the minimum wage, a couple of things may happen in order to offset the increase in wages: 

a.     The business will be forced to lower the hours of some of their employees – Business owners may decide to cut the hours of their employees in order to stay at the same level of revenue as they were at before.  Fewer hours for employees means less purchasing power for them, which may lead to them being in the same situation or worse than before.

b.     The business will have to increase the price of the product/service they offer – In order to keep revenues at the same previous level, the business owner may be required to increase prices.  If prices for goods begin increasing across the board, then this will just offset the increase in the minimum wage.

c.      The business may have to lay people off in order to be able to afford the increase in wages – If people are laid off by the business owner, it will not only put some people in a worse financial situation than before, but it will also cause a new strain in government welfare and unemployment funds.

d.     The business can potentially close its doors – If the business closes, then various people will suffer, including the owners as well as the initial people that the minimum wage increase was trying to help.

As you can see, the crusade to increase minimum wage by the liberals, though probably being sought after for the right intentions, will not really benefit the general population.  This will be a temporary improvement at best, if people even benefit at all.  Conservatives, with the best intentions in mind as well, are trying to resolve the issue long term.  Again, let us focus on fixing the actual issue, which is not “minimum wage is too low” but rather that people are trying to support their families on minimum wage.  Let us focus on how to improve.

What are your thoughts on minimum wage, and how to fix it?

Immigration Reform

While at the Leadership Institute, I had the pleasure of meeting many interesting people.  One of them was Brad Young, from Stone Mountain, GA.  He was very passionate about politics and standing up for the issues.  While he addressed the class, I learned about his story.  He emigrated from Canada at the age of 4 and has been a Georgia resident since.  Please feel free to go to his website to learn more about Brad, http://www.bradyoung.us.

While on break during one of the sessions, Brad and I started talking about immigration and how this hot topic could be fixed.  Right now, especially after the media got a hold of Jeb Bush’s comments and twisted them, it is important for many of us, especially those who are either immigrants, or the sons of immigrants, to stand together and come up with good solutions in order to implement them and make this a non-issue.  But what is the right approach? 

The first thing many people bring up is amnesty.  Putting it simply, amnesty for illegal aliens forgives their acts of illegal immigration and forgives other related illegal acts such as driving and working with false documents. The result of an amnesty is that large numbers of foreigners who entered the United States illegally are rewarded with legal status (Green Card) for breaking immigration law.  One of the main issues with this approach is that it rewards those who came and did whatever they wanted, instead of following the rules.  Many immigrants, such as my parents, came to this country legally and did not work until they had a work visa.  We came to this country with enough savings to be able to survive.  This approach is obviously not feasible every time, as many immigrants come to the United States for better economic opportunities or fleeing an oppressive government.  So what should we do then? Should the country that was founded by immigrants, built by immigrants, and which was once synonymous with the Emma Lazarus quote “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” just kick all illegal immigrants out? 

Rather than an all or nothing approach, we discussed doing some sort of phased approach.  One suggestion was having all illegal immigrants register with the US without the fear of deportation, unless they have been arrested before or have some disqualifying factors.  Next, the government would give them a work permit and allow them to start working and paying taxes, perhaps while also paying an extra fee as an immigrant attempting to gain legal status.  After a set amount of time, they could gain legal resident status, then they could proceed to apply for citizenship according to the existing process.  This process would also only apply to people who apply for the program by the specific date, in order to discourage additional illegal immigrants from continuing to illegally cross our border thinking that they will be eventually forgiven, and encourage immigration through the proper channels.

What are your thoughts on dealing with immigration?

The Leadership Institute and being a Conservative

On March 31^st, I had the pleasure of attending the Leadership Institute’s Campaign Management School in Arlington, VA.  After finishing the 4 day course, I was nothing but impressed with the professionalism of the staff and the incredible amount of knowledge that was shared with all who attended.  The class was a diverse group. Including people who flew in from Alaska, Florida and even one student from Nigeria!  The class was also comprised of a few people who are currently running or planning on running for office, future campaign managers and congressional staffers.  I not only learned a lot in the class, but I was able to make some great connections and met a lot of interesting people who shared many of the same beliefs. 

The lecturers were extremely insightful, helping everyone in the class to figure out how to better run a campaign, successfully organize volunteers, involve the community and so on.  Although all of the lectures taught us a lot, a few of them stuck out.  These included the talk given to us by Morton Blackwell, president and founder of the Leadership Institute, which taught us how to deal with bad media/information during the campaign.  Paulo Sibaja’s lecture on building coalitions and grassroots movement was also extremely engaging.  Paulo was very knowledgeable and entertaining, full of stories and examples.  Lastly, Matthew Hurtt’s lecture on earned media was very educational and the speaker went above and beyond to make sure that all the attendees were engaged and learned the most from the class.  Matt’s experience was very impressive, including the fact that he ran for public office at the age of 19 in his hometown. 

LI, as it is commonly referred, prided itself in being a school to help train young Conservatives, regardless of party affiliation.  Their mission is simple; “…to increase the number and effectiveness of conservative activists and leaders in the public policy process.” We even had a classmate that was an independent!  J  After getting out of class one day, I reflected on why I was a Conservative, and even more importantly, what does it mean to be a conservative.  After thinking about it for a while, I concluded that my definition of a conservative is a simple one:  A person that believes that economic freedom, limited government involvement, a strong national defense and the traditional American values.  I understand that there a lot more issues that help define conservatism, but this is my generic version.  My next question was “Why am I a conservative?”  I believe that was simple to answer.  I believe that the way for America to regain its strength and get back to the top is through the values held by conservatives.  If the government continues to step in and try to overstep its boundaries, like in the case of the Affordable Healthcare Act, better known as Obamacare, then we will not be able to continue to move “forward” like we should.