LOVATO AT LARGE: Why are Liberals delirious in L.A.?

Once again, liberals are attacking the symptom instead of trying to treat the disease and will cause even more problems for the very people they claim to want to help.

For decades, me and many others warned against over-reaching unions, the global economy, artificial wages, heavy regulations on business and other things that would hurt American workers. We've done the reform things in epic ways since the 1960s, and we can throw in the New Deal's failed efforts as well as public school “reform” and illegal immigration, and all I can ask is: So, liberals, besides getting politicians re-elected, how's this been working for you? Manufacturing has largely moved either overseas or at least to areas that want and need it at a cost that makes sense. Just ask how Tennessee is eating Detroit's lunch these days by using fewer restrictions, lower taxes and providing good-paying jobs in a state where they needed and appreciated them. Our abundant Middle Class is dwindling.

Some want to call me names and say I hate the lower classes and want to hold them down when the truth is just the opposite. Those people, they are known as liberals, are also good at deflecting harsh facts and claiming my reasons for being a fiscal conservative is because I am literally evil and want people to suffer. Ouch. Kinda kills the dialogue but we all know who they are. Just look for a Sanders or Clinton campaign rally. While liberals see that people are losing ground against the cost of living, their way to solve this is to simply raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. I will not waste your time and mine trying to logically argue how flawed this simplistic thinking is and I actually hope I can be wrong on this one, though I doubt it. I am very sure these random experiments will prove they will have the opposite effect of what they are intended to do.

The good news is jobs and businesses will move out of strangled urban areas and create jobs in places that need them at wages that make sense, so that will be good in the long run. (remember Tennessee?) So a waiter in Kent or Glendale can make $8 and hour because restaurants in Seattle and L.A. Don't want to pay them almost twice that for performing the same job. Why don't liberals understand this concept? I've personally talked with two corporate VPs who are making their inevitable plans. It's not pretty and the words “robotics” and “move to neighboring cities” are tossed around, pardon the expression, liberally. I do not know why liberals believe there will be no equal and opposite reaction based on decades of corporate response to rising labor costs and demands. You'd really have to be contrary to deny it. My in-laws are perfect examples. Grocery store laborers were soaring until SKU scanners, third-party shelf stockers, non-union stores and employee-owned stores crippled their bargaining power. In my industry, desktop publishing completely eliminated the old paste-up room. About 10 to 20 percent of our entire budget simply walked out the door with severance pay and reference letters. Big papers like the L.A. Times cut literally hundreds of jobs and never replaced them. I'm not saying I like or support this, but I have worked hard in my life to teach young people the skills they need to make them more valuable to employers or even start their own businesses instead if trying to artificially level a playing field that will never be level no matter what government does.

Liberals can play around with empty, feel-good, party-line arguments but these are the facts: Over the last 50 years or so, American labor's high cost and low quality priced itself out of the global economy. Early in my lifetime, anything made in China or Japan was considered junk. Now, we value that quality and consistency. But that doesn't matter to liberals. COUNT ON GREED TO FOR WORKERS TO SUCCEED I want to be wrong but I can always count on the greed of businesses to get around these feel-good laws liberals pass. I see this as a matter if being realistic rather than an attempt to steal money from some people to give to other people who may, or may not, deserve it. In a free economy, when unions and government overreach, it hurts workers in the long run. No way to disprove that in my mind. I've lived it, reported on it, witnessed it. I am not against collective bargaining. I think it can be good for labor and industry and unions saved the country in the 19th Century. At the end of the day, I would rather cure the causes of poverty than treat the symptoms by punishing successful people. That's where my heart is. Here's a few ideas on how we can do that. PUBLIC SCHOOLS The same liberals who support overspending on public schools that never improve and only get worse are also, in effect, saying that a high school diploma isn't worth anything unless it is augmented by post-graduation training. Huh? The vast majority of Americans believe we need a good public school system but understand it is flawed and getting more so. My suggestion is to stop shaming non-academic kids and instead teach them manual and technical skills that will actually help them get and keep a job and be proud of it. The nobility of job quality has to be part of getting those manufacturing jobs back to the states as is the will to work for wages that make sense in the global economy. And it would not hurt to have some classes on compound interest, divorce and child custody laws, how saving money works, how credit cards and student loans work, and how a boss probably won't take as much sass from young workers as their teachers do. Also, most nations give interest and aptitude tests to kids so they can steer themselves into things they might like and/or be good at. Instead, we tell every kid that they can do whatever they want as long as they pass a class then throw as many obscure and unusable facts and skills at them until most of them don't want to be there anymore. What a load of horse manure.

REALISTIC GOALS About 80 percent of people through history are good people who just want some security and love. We can't and would not function well, if we were all doctors, lawyers, engineers, professional athletes or movie stars. But we also don't want them to toil away at their hopeless jobs for 40 years and drop dead. Yet liberals, by instituting a “living wage” instead of reforming our government, are happy to pay people a little more so they can keep their unskilled jobs forever because it makes liberals feel so good about themselves and, I am sure, they like trying to punish employers. Has this ever worked? Never once. “So, Mr. Waiter, here's your $15 and hour so you can keep this miserable job for the rest of your life. It won't help you in the long run but we can feel good about ourselves and get our politicians re-elected.” Sounds about right to me. ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION Again, liberals want Mexicans to flood over the border literally by the millions without restraint and completely ignore the crime and poverty some (not all) bring with them. You can argue all day but the fact is, every illegal immigrant siphons off resources and reduces services to impoverished Americans who liberals claim to want to protect. Couple that with higher wages, job shaming, academics-only public schools, and young Americans who are easily offended and believe the workplace will be as politically correct as their schools are, and we have a stewing disaster we might never extract ourselves from.

As always, Vliv and let Vliv and Vliv long and prosper.