Friday, February 22, 2008

Jetton: Lazy Missourians could learn from Mexicans

Speaker of the House Rod Jetton made a wise decision when he decided not to run for governor.
If he had received his party's nomination, Jay Nixon would already have the sound bite ready for his advertisements.
According to an article by Rudi Keller in the Cape Girardeau Southeast Missourian, Jetton slammed Missouri workers with an unfavorable comparison to illegal workers:

Jetton, speaking to publishers, editors and reporters at the Missouri Governor's Mansion, made an example of Wayne County residents in his 156th Missouri House District. In 2004, an employer who considered moving to Wayne County, which had one of the highest unemployment rates in the state at the time, was able to attract only three applicants, Jetton said. The jobs weren't great -- the pay was about $8 an hour -- but the chance to get off government assistance should have been attractive, he said.

"We have a shortage of people who want to go out and bust their tails and do the jobs," Jetton said.

Jetton made his remarks when asked about his statement made to Republicans in Springfield, Mo., that he would like to "trade some of our people for some of the Mexicans who work so hard."

He didn't back away from that remark. "If we can find a way to trade them, I would trade them in a heartbeat," Jetton said.

3 comments:

Aimee said...

Is he saying that he would rather have eight persons from another country working hard at the jobs here in America for a quarter of the pay instead of two Americans earning their 'worth' (matter of opinion).

Coming from an area of that state that just had a major employer shut it's doors and leave so many without jobs, including my own parents, I can kind of see what I think he's saying...

If you are jobless and moneyless and your family needs food, and you know there are jobs open in a different country, a job that can help you feed your family, go for it. It will most likely mean that you will be paid half to a quarter what a citizen would have been paid, which the company or business will love! It also means that if discovered, you'll be shipped back home and the company you worked for would then face some monitory penalties, but nothing in comparison to the amount they saved by paying eight non-citizens to do the work of eight citizens for the pay of only two.

If you are jobless and moneyless and your family needs food, and you know there are jobs open in the same country you live in and you are unwilling to take that job because it's too physically demanding, doesn't pay you want you are worth (which is a matter of opinion) or used to earn, and are not willing to sink that low, then you, as an American, have the right to that choice and you need to know that you choose to let your family go hungry.

I blame all of this on the increase in minimum wage and devaluing of our dollar. The minimum wage goes up, which helps the little guys earn more dollars per hour, which results in small businesses having to pay more per pay period, forcing the small business to raise prices, lay off employees or close completely. Now, we have more people without jobs, because the companies they work for are unable to pay them due to the increased minimum wage, prices for products have gone up because the production costs have gone up and every business wants to make a profit. To cut down on costs, the business elects to hire eight non-citizens who are more than willing to do the work (they want to feed their family or what not) and pay them as two citizens, resulting in the savings of ~$40 an hour, an approximant $82,000, an easy profit that will allow me to purchase my new vacation home and continue screwing the little people. I voted against it. I’m curious how many people voted for it because they thought “oh, I’ll bring home more money” without realizing that prices across the board would go up as well.


Randy – Thank you for letting me rant. I hope Jetton realizes that he’s part of the problem.

Anonymous said...

Great post Aimee.

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately Jetton is not that far off.

B