Chris On Chris

Chris Jerome Powell, he's been writing about Connecticut government politics for many, many years, having a Chris on to talk about it, Chris. I'm looking for a little bit of backup here because this Chris Murphy, this $25 an hour, which I just... Prattle is insane to me, but I just found out this morning, too. I guess, was it California? I mean, there are $30 in a couple different, in a few other states. And I think there's an end game here, but why don't you take our listeners first through your recent column that tackled minimum wage bunk? The legislation that Senator Murphy and Senator Richard Blumenthal are proposing would raise the federal minimum wage to $25 an hour for the largest employers by 2032 and for everybody else by 2039.

The minimum wage is always arguable. It has its pros and has its cons. But anybody who's in business right now, and here's, you know, $25 minimum wage. I mean, it's just going to drive them crazy. There's nothing in the legislative proposal from Murphy that is going to assure that employers could afford a $25 minimum wage. inflation is uh... really out of control not just for uh... employees but for uh... employers as well i'm not sure that uh... the legislation in the end is going to be much because uh... inflation is going to stay out of control in the united states because uh... the u.s debt is out of control we keep building the debt up it's nearing forty trillion dollars there's no way it can be paid off except through uh... devaluation of the currency and uh... and inflation i suspect that uh... when we get to twenty thirty two and you know twenty nine uh... you know twenty five dollar minimum wages uh... is not going to accomplish anything because uh... you know a big max going to cost a hundred dollars Yeah, well, that's it. That's the struggle, too, because you can't help and have this conversation. There's no way to have the conversation about minimum wage without first thinking what it was when you first entered the workforce, which we all do. I don't know if you want to share what it was when you entered it. Oh, yeah. I was working at tobacco, and I was, I guess, 14, 15 years old. They paid us $1.5 an hour when they took the taxes out. We were making exactly a dollar an hour. Hardest work we ever did for the least amount of money.

building up the debt and devaluing the dollar to pay for. It's this way because we impair construction of housing in Connecticut. There's things, you know, you could do to help the working class, but it's not the minimum wage. You could stop inflation. You could lower the cost of housing, which is, you know, probably the biggest single expense that people have. There are things on our tax laws that grossly favor capital over wages. Those things definitely ought to be debated and adjusted. But, you know, minimum wage, I mean, that's not going to do it. How much of this $25 an hour, this minimum wage talk coming from Murphy is really just 2008 primer? Well, of course, you know, many Democrats now are pandering to what they perceive as the leftward extreme of the Democratic Party. He's not the only one. And, you know, I understand that. Times are getting harder for many people in the country, but the minimum wage, you know, it's not the solution. They're just going to take it away from you with price increases. That's it. And again, we're on with Chris Jerome Powell, and not to drag you into something too overtly conspiratorial. But, you know, I was thinking about it last week and having a lively conversation about it last week. And it's like, he's got to know Chris Murphy that not necessarily your McDonald's or your Walmarts. you know, these otherwise entry to the workforce gigs, or at least they used to be for our 16 or 17 or 18 year olds. You don't see that much anymore. There's a lot of technology taking over a lot of those got, I mean, I'm self-checkout at most every grocery store that I go to nowadays where there used to be, you know, cashiers and et cetera, et cetera. So the real hit that... The people who would take the hit would be your mom, pause, who like to have, you know, maybe eight employees. And they're like, well, I can't have eight employees at $25 an hour. I feel in the long run, he knows, well. Ultimately, what you would do is give that job to somebody who's here illegally, and you'd pay them off the books. Or you'd get a robot. You know, his proposal has been ridiculed. You know, the biggest boon for the robot designed and manufacturing industry that you could have coming out of the federal government. Of course, you know, Murphy's a big supporter of illegal immigration. All Democrats are, and the legal immigration knocks wages down. Yeah, but what he doesn't, what he misses, and it's amazing to me that he misses it, Chris, is that, okay, so the 16-year-old kid who's now not getting minimum wage at the mom-paw, you know, the cool, I don't know what, you know, the record store down the street or whatever the job might have been. Okay, it's now going to a 38-year-old Ecuadorian man who's going to get paid $3 an hour.

by a boss who works the hell out of him. He's got five kids to feed. Yeah, it'll be paid under the table, and taxes will not be paid on it. Taxes will not be paid on it, and his labor will be exploited to no end. And Chris Murphy claims to be of the party that cares about that. You don't. These people are being best-case scenario when it comes to illegal immigration is their American dream is them getting worked like dogs and treated like them, too. Yeah, well, but look, the Democratic Party used to be very skeptical of illegal immigration, precisely because people understood that illegal immigration was weakening the bargaining power of the working class in the country. But now the Democrats want illegal immigration because they see it as a way of gaining control of legislative districts through reapportionment on the census changes. will have to measure the number of illegal immigrants and count them for redistricting purposes, even as the illegal immigrants can't vote. That's well, sir. Speaking of which, and I didn't plan on going here, but your take on the gubernatorial race that we are in the midst of right now? But the governor certainly seems very concerned about the far left. He does. In his party, represented by Elliott, I mean, in the first district for Congress, you know, all the candidates seem to be pandering to the far left in the Democratic Party. I don't know if there's any moderates left in the Democratic Party. We're going to find out in the primaries. But the party certainly seems to... have, you know, really gone off the deep end. Yeah. Do you think he's in trouble? Lamont, do you think he's got legitimate trouble at the, I mean, forever blue Connecticut? Well, all I can say is all the noise I hear in the Democratic Party is far left noise now. You know, Nixon gave us the phrase silent majority. Maybe there's a silent majority in the Democratic Party that's a little more moderate than Josh Elliott. I don't know. It's going to be interesting. I mean, certainly, you know, the governor himself. As you can see, in his advertising is very concerned about maintaining votes of, you know, far-left people. Oh, it's insane, Chris. To see him go from... You know, mocking Connecticut residents. Like everybody's complaining about their electricity bill. I drive around. They've all got their lights on. Everybody's got their lights on it. And he's laughing. And then a month later, his first ad comes out, Eversource has got to be taken down a peg or two. And he's like, oh, wow. He's breaking a sweat if he's going this way. And I believe he is.

Yeah, well, you know, the utility issue is really kind of deceptive. The big problem with electricity prices are the price of energy generally. It's not overpaid utility executives, though they have many of them. The real problem is energy costs and the difficulty of getting natural gas into Connecticut.