Minimum wage is for teens, not breadwinners

To the editor:

President Obama wants to raise the minimum wage because a person working full-time and making minimum wage would be below the poverty line.

Minimum wage wasn’t intended for heads of households to raise a family on. Minimum wage is for an entry-level position, such as taking orders at a fast-food counter. The functions of that job simply aren’t worth more than minimum wage. The education, skills and tasks should match the salary. A business owner needs to fill various positions, not be responsible for supporting his employees’ families. Many people making minimum wage are teenagers or people who should not start a family until they can afford it.

People who start out in a minimum-wage position have the opportunity to prove their ambition, work hard and get a promotion. They aren’t supposed to stay at that position and wage forever. They should strive to do better and get a pay raise.

Let’s say that order-taker was always dependable, friendly and kept busy finding tasks to do even when there were no customers. That person could get a promotion to shift supervisor and perhaps get a dollar-an-hour raise. If the minimum wage is raised, to be fair, then the shift supervisor’s salary should be raised that much higher than the entry-level position. So we wouldn’t be raising just the minimum wage, but the wages of all the positions going up the ladder.

Now let’s say that shift supervisor excels at that position and becomes assistant manager and gets another raise. Two years later, he becomes manager and gets another raise. He keeps working hard and saving money, and before you know it, he buys his own franchise. That really happens in America, the land of opportunity. We are a country that rewards hard work and entrepreneurship.

Look at the list of the 20 wealthiest people in America. Most of them started out with nothing and built up their wealth. Some probably worked for minimum wage at their first job. It took time, dedication and hard work and, yes, they did build it.

KAREN SOMMER

LAS VEGAS

Empty promises

To the editor:

President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address was another reason for serious concern about the direction America is headed. This Oval Office version of an elitist Pied Piper demonstrated his penchant for taking the nation closer to the cliff, assuming the American public is distracted and gullible enough to move in the direction he is leading them.

The nation continues to sink in debt and underemployment, with new threats facing it around the globe. Yet this carnival master spins out his fool’s rhetoric about global warming, cap and trade, green energy, a higher minimum wage, gun control and mandatory preschool. Every policy button he pushes drives America closer to its knees and will bury it in deeper trouble than before.

The president was genuflecting to the far-left base of the party, a place where he finds his greatest comfort. Glib words pass through his lips, as a majority of Americans are in a trance, lulled by his oratory style, false promises and empty hopes for the future. Only hours later he jets off to Florida for an expensive golf trip at taxpayer expense as he thumbs his nose at struggling Americans who cannot afford to pay their bills.

BOB JACK

NORTH LAS VEGAS

No more nanny laws

To the editor:

Assembly Bill 122, which imposes a 5-cent tax on some fast-food items, and Assembly Bill 123, which bans texting by pedestrians while crossing a street, are bad pieces of legislation (Feb. 15 Review-Journal).

AB 122 imposes a “fat tax,” as some may phrase it, to curb obesity. The bill would punish those individuals who choose to eat fast food for various reasons, including convenience and overall enjoyment. The other part of the bill is the increase in state revenues at the expense of consumers who already are struggling enough. Neither increasing revenue nor punishing the food choices of consumers are good enough reasons for this bill to be passed.

AB 123 bans individuals from texting, whether sending or receiving data on any electronic device, while crossing an intersection except in rare cases such as emergencies. The ban on texting while driving hasn’t worked very well. If a ban on texting while walking was passed, the same result would occur.

Everyone needs to get a grasp on individual responsibility to take us off the current path of the nanny state.

BILL MILLER

LAS VEGAS

Federal vs. local

To the editor:

I read Wednesday’s article about the FBI agent wounded in a shootout and was concerned. Why was he in a position to be shot in the first place?

He was wounded assisting in the serving of an arrest warrant. Your article went on to include previous shootings involving federal agents in Las Vegas. One was also the result of attempting to make an arrest. One warrant was related to a local murder and a local robbery.

Why are federal agents involved in local or state warrant executions within the state of issue? Don’t they have any pressing federal-level cases to deal with? With the Department of Homeland Security buying a billion rounds of ammunition, which is about three rounds for every man, woman and child in the country, is this another example of federal encroachment into local jurisdictional matters? Why have local police?

Isn’t it bad enough that Las Vegas police officers get caught on out-of-state joy rides and lie to their supervisors about it and remain on duty, speed and get in accidents resulting in deaths and shoot contained, unarmed, nonthreatening citizens? Now we have federal agents executing state warrants on local citizens?

WARREN PAWLIUK

PAHRUMP

Where are the cuts?

To the editor:

According to data provided by the U.S. Mint, a stack of $1,000 bills totaling $1 trillion would be 67 miles high.

Our national debt is rapidly approaching $17 trillion. A stack of $1 bills would reach an astonishing 1,139,000 miles.

It’s quite disappointing to see the president staunchly opposed to any proposals for spending cuts.

STEVE HECHT

LAS VEGAS

Need bigger cuts

To the editor:

With all of the dire results of sequestration predicted by the administration, nothing is said about cutting back our bloated government.

The unemployment rate in Washington, D.C., is less than 5 percent. The government should eliminate whole agencies, such as the departments of education and homeland security and the Environmental Protection Agency. The money for these programs could go the states, which would be able to run these efforts more efficiently without the federal mandates and restrictions.

The cuts amount to 2.3 percent of total spending, with 5 percent from domestic programs and 7 percent from defense spending. While these cuts will result in some hardships, we must remember that it was our generation that created the problem and it is unfair to push this problem off to future generations. The only way real cuts in spending can happen is with the sequestration, because our Congress is not able to pass any meaningful cuts otherwise.

HENRY SCHMID

LAS VEGAS