Tony DiTommaso – 1/29/06

This page was last updated on January 29, 2006.

Minimum wage hike a ploy; Tony DiTommaso; Beaver County Times; January 29, 2006.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.

“Well, there must be an election coming up soon. How do I know? The state Democrats and Gov. Ed Rendell are in full blitz to buy votes with their minimum wage bill.

“And you can bet your last dollar that Democrats in Congress will be following suit shortly.”

[RWC] Mr. DiTommaso needs to pay closer attention. Congressional Democrats have been beating this drum for quite a while. Mr. DiTommaso should also know Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) supports raising the minimum wage.

“There are two things that are as certain as night follows day. The moment Democrats get elected, they will raise your taxes, and the moment they want to get re-elected, they will attempt to buy votes.”

[RWC] Mr. DiTommaso shouldn’t throw rocks. Sadly, as a group, elected PA Republicans are guilty of the same behavior. I’d be willing to be if a Republican governor had proposed the same tax increases as noted below, General Assembly Republicans would have supported them.

“When Rendell got elected, the first thing he proposed was a 30 percent increase in the state income tax rate (which The Times editorial board supported wholeheartedly). I wonder why you didn’t hear how this tax increase and the 30-cents-a-pack cigarette tax adversely affected the people on minimum wage. Isn’t a tax increase a cut in take-home pay? How is this a morally acceptable thing to do?

“Who really pays for a minimum wage increase anyway? The liberal media will have you believe that it is the greedy business owner, when in fact it is all of us. This includes the minimum wage earner also.

“Business will pass on the extra cost by raising prices. The rich can easily absorb these increases, but minimum-wage earners have their ‘pay increase’ eaten up by the increased cost of goods and services they must now purchase.

“Many times they end up worse off than they were before because businesses will use this increase in wages to increase their profits. Hence we have the saying that ‘the rich get richer and the poor get poorer’.”

[RWC] Here’s where Mr. DiTommaso runs off the tracks. How does a wage increase translate into increased profits?

“If our reps want to do the morally right thing, they should use the money they earmarked for their pay raises and send each minimum wage earner a check.”

[RWC] Again Mr. DiTommaso is off the tracks. How is it “the morally right thing” for legislators to give tax dollars they acquired illegally to people who didn’t earn it? Shouldn’t the ill gotten gain be returned to the taxpayers?