Hot topic, Barry — lol!

I’m with Iggy and Bugsey about the minimum wage issue.

Also, it seems wrong to be telling other people how they should spend their money. If I hire employees and I’m willing to offer them $5 an hour or $50 an hour … they should be free to take it or leave it.

Regarding “greedy” corporations … the top dogs at these corporations take a LOT of risk, so they deserve to make much more. Whose butt is going to sit in jail if something goes wrong? Certainly not the minimum wage worker at the counter. When I worked for corporations, the really tough decisions kept getting pushed up the line. I was always relieved when a thorny issue came my way and I could punt it up to my boss. But, the buck stops somewhere and someone has to make the very toughest of decisions.

Also, the laws in the US strangle businesses. If I owned a corporation and I had the choice of hiring more lawyers to make sure I’m not going to jail over some ridiculous law being broken, or raising the salaries of some workers … I’m hiring the lawyers.

My cousin passed away last year, but he started a window washing business in the Florida keys when he was 18, and he branched out to all sorts of services related to caring for a property. He had his business for 40 years.

About 15 years ago, he became certified to trim mangrove trees. It’s a very specialized business. However, if one of his employees cut down the wrong tree — it was my cousin who would literally end up in jail … not the employee. He was constantly worried, and I think he deserved a ton of money for that worry. ((We had a family friend who went to jail for five years because he cut down a protected tree on his property and didn’t know it was a protected tree.)

Lisa