Good Morning Middle America, your King of Simple News is on the air.
After I wrote the piece yesterday regarding 5,369,000 people becoming job seekers at the end of May, I picked up the newspaper and there was an article about young people finding that jobs are very elusive this year.
There are more factors than the failing economy that have led to low employment for summer jobs. Not the least of which are labor laws. As a young man, I worked for the farmers in our area for $1.00 per hour plus benefits. The benefits were lunch and an occasional jug of root beer of cold watermelon when we came in from the hay fields.
Today, the requirement of minimum wage, tax collection, liability, safety concerns and poor work ethics have nearly ruled out hiring younger people. Having a kid mow our yard exposes us to great liability. Should he or she get injured while on your property, a lawsuit is in order.
Did you check your young mower’s workers comp insurance? What about a liability policy? Did you run them through a safety course? Do you have signs up saying, “Do Not Stick Your Hand or Foot in the Lawnmower?”
I’m sure that labor laws were passed with good intention, but then my old dad use to say that the road to hell is also paved with good intentions. The point is that more laws create the need for more lawyers and fewer real jobs.
Some years back, the general aviation business was literally sued out of existence. Companies like Piper and Cessna at one time closed their doors entirely. Hundreds of thousands of people lost good jobs as the liability became too costly to manage.
These are just a couple of examples of what ails America’s Middle Class employment. Life isn’t safe and blaming others for anything and everything that goes wrong is just another nail in Middle America’s coffin. If you don’t want to get hurt, stay in the house and watch Maury, but don’t come around messin’ up my life.
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