Down The Sewer Pipe – Politically Speaking

In your community your first concern should be about employment because with out employment the local economy will suffer.  A community made up of a population in which all persons are impoverished is generally not a good idea.  While a community made of up a cross section of all income brackets is generally a good idea.

A community of impoverished persons has zero cash flow and no upward mobility.  Communities made of up a cross section of all income brackets tend to be better off finically and better places to live.

Telling people that they need their work to be within four blocks of where they live is poor governance.  What Constitutional; right does an elected office holder have in dictating where people can work?  If employment and industry do not provide a workforce with an income where will they get money to place food on their table and a roof over their head?

Land use planning has been used, as of late, as method that municipality’s use to dictate what sort of employment is available in their town.  Higher paid jobs tend to come from industry and, as Portland Oregon abandons the industry that is here, the income rate sinks.  The local newspaper is full of jobs, true, but these jobs do not pay a living wage and offer virtually no benefits.

As lower income people move into Portland Oregon local businesses have two choices:

1.      Go out of business

2.      Make less on each sale that they make

A guaranteed basic wage does not induce businesses to pay more to their work force.  What it does is keep wages depressed with the result of leaving large parts of the population locked in jobs they hate and cannot get out of.

Businesses and industry will make demands, to be sure, but when they are gone and their workforce is unemployed; the people that contributed to the job loss will not become reelected.

As industry leaves and lower incomes jobs become the only choice; the rank and file will view your attempts at governance to be poor.  The real question, then, is do you want represent all of the people of just the rich few?

Sherman