Klein's passing

No, Ralph Klein did not actually die, but the Klein we all once knew and loved is gone. Sure he was a right wing asshole, but he was OUR asshole. He fought for conservatism in our socialistic country, helping to ensure Alberta being the most successful province in the country. Don't get me wrong, I am in no way implying that he is the worst Premier in the country, I still believe that he is by far the best. I just think that the best way to judge him isn't against his pitiful competition, but against himself of only a few years ago. So in the last week Klein says that he wants to raise minimum wage up from $5.90 to $7.00, put in a tuition freeze, and now have a stat holiday for the centinial anniversery of the province.

I'll attack these in order, starting with minimum wage. I left Alberta in 2001 upon graduation of high school. During highschool I worked at McDonalds for about $6.50-7.00/hour. This priced me right below where the new minimum wage may be, but I was still clearly higher than the $5.90. This is because I would not accept a job that only paid $5.90, competitive wage for fast food jobs in Lethbridge dictated that you could not hire high school punks for minimum wage. We may have not known about supply and demand, yet we knew how to use it to our advantage. So now that it is $7.00, it will be great, all the highschool kids get bumped up to $7.00! (It really is only effecting people in high school of course, because Alberta has the lowest rate of employment at minimum wage in the country. Full time employees at fast food restaurants are already above the $7.00 minimum.) So who would argue against giving high school students a better wage? Well I would. When you set a minimum wage, you are setting a price floor, as microeconomics teaches you, whenever you have a price floor that is above market price there will always be a surplus, in this case the surplus would be of highschool students. Less jobs will be available with a higher cost of labour, coupled with the fact that more teenagers may want jobs. Yes, McDonalds will not close down because of the higher wage, but they may schedule less people per shift. Less employees mean lower quality of service, and thus less customers. McDonalds would only do this to the point of maximizing profits obviously, and they can do that by lowering expenses (less workers) and revenues (less customers). On a smaller company basis, this change will just come straight out of expenses (and hopefully not bankrupt new companies as their forcasts certainly did not include $7/hour wage) as it is hard to cut 1/7th of your employees from each shift when you only have 2 working.

So there will be less highschool students that can get jobs now in Alberta, how are they supposed to pay for university? Well don't fear, as we all know the best way to correct a wrong is with another wrong, we can freeze tuition! I don't know where to start on this one as there is just so much wrong to fit into a short space. What ends up happening with tuition freezes is that it comes out of tax payers pockets to subsidize education for young people. The cost of education should rest on the person that benefits the most. I do not want to pay for someone to do a philosophy degree just so they have to be retrained if they ever the workforce. If you don't want to pay for my degrees, that's ok too, I don't expect everyone to like my choices either(I'm not claiming all my choices are the best).

Now he wants to add an extra holiday to celebrate 100 years of Alberta. What crap. Again, holidays are something that sound nice, everyone loves taking them, but what Klein did not consider was the economic impact that this day will have.

Taken from a Globe and Mail article:
"My main objection is he's creating a political benefit and imposing a private-sector cost," said Dan Kelly, western vice-president for the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, a lobby group for small and medium-sized companies. There would be a $712-million loss in productivity for the day off, according to Mr. Kelly.

I want my Ralph Klein back that helped businesses, not by corporate welfare (Alberta is only province to my knowlege that does not give grants for companies to come to the province), but by getting the government out of the way. I miss the days when Klein's idea of handouts included walking into a homeless shelter and flinging change at them, I know it is in you Ralph, please come back!