The ability to hold slippery opinions seems to be a must for legislative reporters who support the government. As long as clawbacks were Liberal government policy, Tom Fletcher really didn’t have a problem with them.
Now that they are seen as a political embarrassment, he still thinks that it was valid, but sees the other side as well: that children weren’t getting the benefit of child support payments. Come election time, he will be lauding Christie Clark for ending the policy.
Similarly, he now admits that the increase to minimum wage is “paltry,” but thinks that a $15 an hour minimum wage is a socialist dream world.
Although I lived for 20 years on a socialist kibbutz, I admit I still don’t know what such a dream world looks like. My experience was that it was pretty much like anywhere else. What I do know is that Henry Ford (not exactly anyone’s choice for a ‘leader of socialist industry’ award) figured out almost 100 years ago that if you pay your workers living wages, they buy your products and you get rich. If Tom wants to call that a socialist dream world, so be it.
A higher minimum wage for everyone means that small businesses run by owner-operators can afford to pay themselves a higher wage as well: they aren’t competing against slave labourers working for peanuts.
Unionizing the large chains like Walmart and McDonalds would be even better: independent owner operators would be looking at a return similar to union rates for their own efforts, everyone would have more money to spend, and spend they would.
Richard SmileyAnglemont
