Colin@TheTruthAbout / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)
Democrats often posit themselves as the party that will defend and protect workers to their last breath. Each of the democratic presidential candidates this year supported vastly changing employer/employee relations. The democratic nominee Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris support a $15 minimum wage, forcing people who work in unionized places to pay union dues, and raising teacher wages by $13,500. Despite this fiery rhetoric in favor of workers rights, democrats are not the party of the working class. Either democratic politicians are ignorant or they are trying to fool workers into voting for them. They discourage new hiring and their policies cause unemployment. If the democratic party were allowed to achieve all of its goals they would do much more to harm workers than to help them.
The list of jobs which democratic states could have created but discouraged with their policies should be enough to serve as an indictment of the far left policies which the democratic party continues to endorse. This week, in an effort to protect workers, a California superior court ordered Lyft and Uber to reclassify their drivers as employees. Before, they were classified as independent contractors. This new classification would force Uber and Lyft to provide full benefits to people completing a part time job to earn extra money on the side. Uber has threatened to leave California altogether if the state remains steadfast on this ruling.
It is also important to note here that Joe Biden would support measures like this on a national level because he wants to fight the “gig economy” by forcing many companies to reclassify independent contractors as employees. Electing him would be an endorsement of these failed policies. It is hard to understand how democrats could be so completely oblivious as to think that discouraging a company from hiring people and causing it to lay off its employees could be good for workers. My guess is that they didn’t ask the some 100,000 Uber drivers in California, who make their livelihood from the company, whether or not they disagreed with the ruling.
Workers in New York have also suffered from the failed scheming of democrats. The infamous Alexandria Ocasio Cortez caused Amazon to pull their plans to build a campus in Queens, New York. She was not alone, though. State senator Michael Gianaris led the movement. They cost the city the 25,000 jobs that Amazon would have created. AOC then had the audacity to ask “haters to apologize,” after Amazon decided to open offices in a New York neighborhood. Apparently she doesn’t realize that a single office location won’t bring the 25,000 jobs that an entire headquarters would have. To be fair, Governor Cuomo and Mayor De Blasio did support Amazon’s initial move, but it is hard to imagine that this ever would have happened in a state that was run by republicans.
In addition to discouraging individual companies from moving to their cities, democrats’ plans would also cause layoffs throughout the entire country. This is due to the fact that they want a federally mandated $15 minimum wage to be implemented. It is an undisputed fact among economists that minimum wages hurt low income workers by causing layoffs of people who are not considered to be worth $15 an hour. According to a study done by the Congressional Budget Office in 2019, a minimum wage of $15 would increase wages for some but, “1.3 million other workers would become jobless, according to CBO’s median estimate.” It is extremely disingenuous that a party who presents itself as pro-worker could call for this radical policy which would cause over one million people to be laid off. The only reason they would do such a thing is either because they are ignorant or they like demagoguery.
Despite imploring workers to vote for them and promising a number of protections, democrats are in no way the party for workers. They are out of touch with reality and call for radical measures which would hurt America’s working population almost beyond repair. Demonizing the companies that provide people with jobs and imposing stringent regulations on them is a surefire way to make it so that workers have very little opportunity to work.
Your humble servant,
Silence Dogood
