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Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Democrats vs. Republicans on Job Creation

     I wrote earlier about the Presidents excellent new planned executive action to raise wages for millions of Americans by raising the ceiling on the exemption for overtime pay. 

     http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/06/president-obamas-plan-to-give-5-million.html

    As Greg Sargent discusses, obviously the GOP is going to hate this but happily there isn't much they can do about it. Sargent analyzes the difference between Republicans and Democrats on jobs. 

    "The more immediate political impact of this rule change lies in its place among a constellation of proposals Democrats will be offering on things such as the minimum wage and paid sick leave, proposals that are aimed at arresting the growing cruelty of the American workplace. As I’ve argued before, one way to think about the contrast between what Republicans and Democrats offer on the economy is that Republicans say they’ll get you as far as your employer’s door, while Democrats want to walk inside with you. Republicans argue that their preferred policies, mostly tax cuts and light regulation on businesses, will accelerate growth so that new jobs will be created. But once you’ve got the job, you’re on your own. The Democratic argument is that government has to come inside the workplace, to make sure people are being treated fairly. So they want to increase pay, provide family and sick leave, allow workers to bargain collectively, make sure no one is discriminated against and generally establish a structure that guarantees that people are treated well and can maintain some measure of dignity."

     http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/06/30/republicans-will-hate-obamas-new-overtime-rule-but-they-cant-do-anything-about-it/

    I agree with everything he says here but to further really quantify this yu could say that what the GOP says is:

   We can get you lots of jobs by taking away cumbersome regulation and taxes so that the job creators can invest and create lots of jobs for you. 

   However, what they don't have any answer for is the question of whether these jobs pay anywhere near a living wage. Sumner's answer to this is probably as good as conservatives can do: he argues to get rid of the MW but to raise the EIC. 

   Democrats say: It's not enough to create a bunch of $8 an hour jobs people need jobs they can actually live on.'

   The GOP answer here would be mostly there's nothing the government can or should do about a lot of low wage jobs other than perhaps further cutting regulations that they will argue is causing the low wages. So the GOP essentially says the choice is between low paying jobs and no jobs at all. 

    So the GOP says Our policies will create lots of jobs but we can't promise they will pay that much while the Dem argument is Our policies will create lots of high paying jobs
  

     

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