Radical Georgia Moderate: Believing in the free market when it's convenient
Dec 14, 2006    Georgia Political Digest.com   

Believing in the free market when it's convenient
by Rusty Tanton | www.radicalgeorgiamoderate.org| bio | Georgia Podcast Network Audio File

Your standard-issue Republican legislator will drone on and on about government getting out of the way and letting the free market make decisions. If said legislator really believed his or (rarely) her own dogma, (s)he wouldn't be standing in the way of an increase in the minimum wage.

According to a widely-discussed University of Georgia Survey Research Center survey, 89.7 percent of Georgians (i.e. The Market) support an increase in the minimum wage.

State Sen. Robert Brown (D-Macon) has responded to market forces and will introduce legislation to raise the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 per hour in next year's Legislative session.

And yet, the socialist Republican majority appears poised to step in and deny the free market the wage increase it demands.

"I personally don't support it. You start eliminating part-time jobs for young people when you raise it," House Majority Leader Jerry Keen told the Augusta Chronicle.

Setting aside the belief of 650 economists that Keen's statement is hogwash, I have to ask: Rep. Keen, who are you to deny the market what it demands?

If Keen believed in free markets, he wouldn't try to tell Georgians what's best for them despite what they demand. Sounds to me like he's just another big government socialist trying to install a nanny state.

(Note to the sarcasm-deficient: I don't really believe Rep. Keen or most Republicans are socialists. And I don't believe most Democrats are socialists. I'll stop calling you names when you stop calling everyone else names.)

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