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Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Sue Jeffers profile

The Minnesota Daily has a profile of Sue Jeffers, the bar owner challenging Governor Pawlenty in the primary this fall. It gives a pretty good indication of where she stands on the issues; I pretty much thought, "Ummm, okay then" after reading it.

I especially like her comment about how horrible it is to raise the minimum wage: “It cost me $40,000 a year with no increase in productivity (at Stub & Herb’s)." I'm sure her employees appreciate that. Maybe she didn't stop to think about how employees who make a bit more money are more productive because they don't have to worry so much about having enough money to pay their rent and food?

She also demonstrates her complete ignorance about student service fees at the U of M, implying that somehow a "goat club" is being directly supported by student fees. Ummm, not quite. Very few student groups get student service fees. But good try on pandering to the students.

1 Comments:

At 5:43 PM, June 16, 2006, Blogger Da Man said...

Dude, have you ever owned your own business? You should check out what the founder of Whole Foods Market (no conservative himself) said here: http://libertyunbound.com/archive/2006_06/mackey-winning.html

An excerpt: At the time I started my business, the Left had taught me that business and capitalism were based on exploitation: exploitation of consumers, workers, society, and the environment. I believed that "profit" was a necessary evil at best, and certainly not a desirable goal for society as a whole. However, becoming an entrepreneur completely changed my life. Everything I believed about business was proven to be wrong.

The most important thing I learned about business in my first year was that business wasn't based on exploitation or coercion at all. Instead I realized that business is based on voluntary cooperation. No one is forced to trade with a business; customers have competitive alternatives in the market place; employees have competitive alternatives for their labor; investors have different alternatives and places to invest their capital. Investors, labor, management, suppliers — they all need to cooperate to create value for their customers. If they do, then any realized profit can be divided amongst the creators of the value through competitive market dynamics.

In other words, business is not a zero-sum game with a winner and loser. It is a win, win, win, win game — and I really like that. However, I discovered despite my idealism that our customers thought our prices were too high, our employees thought they were underpaid, the vendors would not give us large discounts, the community was forever clamoring for donations, and the government was slapping us with endless fees, licenses, fines, and taxes.


If you are serious on the subject, you should check out the link to the speech by John Mackey.

 

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