(05-10-2016, 12:57 AM)Kinser79 Wrote:Yes it is. The only minimum wage he can abolish is the Federal one. If he does that, of course the state laws will still be on the books, the president has no power to change that.(05-09-2016, 07:41 PM)Odin Wrote:(05-08-2016, 08:06 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: He wants to let the states decide their own minimum wages.
Tomayto, tomahto. different ways of saying the same thing, just different framing.
No it is not.
Bringing up the fact that the state laws would still be in place is a red herring.
Getting rid of the Federal minimum wage has been on the Republican wish list for a long time. It's hugely unpopular and so they do not try to sell it in general election campaigns. But Trump seems to be an exception to the normal rules of politics. So Trump is giving it a whirl. Looks like its working on you. If it does not pan out it will go away; it has been amply demonstrated that Trump pays no price for flip-flopping.
But if Trump can win with that promise intact, the the Congress will have the cover to go ahead and do it. The idea of making union bastion Michigan a right-to-work state was pretty crazy particularly when the governor ran as being opposed to the idea. But it happened.
Industrial cities like Milwaukee, Kalamazoo and Flint all had many decades when industry dumped waste in the river. As a result these river bottoms are filled with sludge. Nobody would use river water as a source of drinking water. In Milwaukee and Flint they used lake water, in Kalamazoo we use well water. Christ, the Kalamazoo river sediment is known to be full of PCBs. Not only that, but a few years back 800,000 gallons of crude oil were dumped in the river. So when I first heard about the water issue in Flint and learned they were using river water, I thought, glad I am not drinking that water. And so when there were reports of deaths, and then later lead in the water, I wasn't surprised. And when I learned it has occurred under a GOP-controlled state management, well that was just another case of Republican governance. After all, the roads are falling apart because the GOP refused to raise the gas tax, which supplies the money for road maintenance.
And why did Flint and so many other cities get into fiscal trouble? Well it was that goddam prop A the GOP forced on us in the early 1990's. In the old days cities funded their operations from property taxes. Prop A eliminated the cities ability to do that, and cut the amount of revenue they were receiving from local property taxes. For example in 1991 we paid about $2400 in property taxes ($4200 in today's money). Today we pay $2000, so our taxes are half what they were then. This implies the city is collecting half today of what they did from local revenues back then.
In exchange they were to receive money from the state obtained from a 50% increase in the sales tax. But that did not always happen to the extent promised. Republican-controlled states preferred to use the money for tax cuts. (The do this at the Fed level, but their the shortfall just becomes bigger deficits). It would be a lot worse here if not for the Kalamazoo promise (Bless their hearts).
What state do you live in, do you have experience with Republican state governance?