(E-mail to be sent tonight)

Dear Mr. Beck,

TLDR(To Long Didn’t Read) Short Version:

I’m one of the few young people that I know that actually cares about the situation that currently exists in the political realm. I expect that by the time I earn a decent enough wage allowing me to dedicate time to something other than paying my bills that America will be firmly in it’s regression. Simply put the age disparity of the Tea Parties will render them impotent. On your next round table type episode please bring to the front of the line the issue of recruitment and the lack of youth outreach.

Thank You.

The Long Version:

I’ve been fortunate enough to benefit from the many safety and protective nets that our government has erected over the decades. Taking a third party perspective I should find myself indebted to the government forever for the support that allowed my family to survive when 150 years ago we would have starved(or most of the third world). This support allowed me to finish 2nd in my high school class and attend 3 years of college (cumulative because of moving) but more importantly it’s allowed me the opportunity to survive long enough where I have cable internet and sufficient spare time to compose this letter.

I attended a Tea Party that was hosted on 5/17/09 at the Emerald Coast Conference Center (http://www.destin-fwb.com/). The most disheartened thing was the huge age disparity of the attendees. I was probably the only person under 30 that came on my own volition with the exception of a few military looking couples(Eglin Air Force base is 20 minutes away). Lower taxes, less government spending, sustainable social programs are all wonderful prospects but the lack of anyone young that values them will eventually kill any effort to reign them in.

I work with a guy that has 2 part-time jobs. He generally works about 50 hours combined. The way the system is currently stacked he will vote (if he had the time) for which ever party promises more benefits. Let me break it down:

19 hours part-time at job A at $9/hour + 31 hours at job B at $9/hour = 450 pretax income per week.
Let’s slap 15% aggregate tax percentage and you get 382.5 post tax income.

This averages to 1657.5 dollars per month.

Approximate Monthly Essentials:
$900 rent composite (Housing/electricity/water/trash)(He had roommates but they moved out. He got new ones but can‘t be counted on.)
$80 fuel (Very little Public transit in this area)
$200 food (Average $2.19 per meal)
$100 car insurance (It’s mandatory)
$100 credit card fee’s/ interest.

This leaves him with only $277.5 in other income at this point. He doesn’t get health insurance from either employer as being part-time the coverage to benefits ratios are really bad.

Let’s say he did get the insurance which will be about 120 per month he’s down to 157.5.

Other than essentials he has a grand total of 9.5% of his income that’s not locked down. Since both jobs hold him at part-time so they don’t have to give sick days, vacation or, benefits of any type he’s not making any progress forward.

In this situation this makes programs like Nationalized Healthcare and joining a Union wonderful prospects. There’s no one looking out to improve his life. He doesn’t want kids because he’s responsible enough to understand that HE CAN’T AFFORD THEM! If he wanted to go back to school to get a better education to get a better job HE CAN’T AFFORD IT! Those that value conservative issues aren’t being proactive in their recruitment of the hard workers in their own communities. I feel that this oversight will lead eventually to the failure of the system as a whole.

Let’s look at this from a different perspective:
Per week breakdown
50 Hours on the actual clock
2 Hours work prep time (bathing, getting dressed, ect…) for 8 different shifts
1 Hour worth of drive time
56 Hours worth of Sleep time
3 Hours worth of (cooking, cleaning, washing dishes, ect..) worth of assorted housework

Leaving a total of 56 Hours per week worth of available time.

This hectic schedule reminds me of a guy I worked with in Dallas. Chris had 2 kids and a wife and was making barely enough to survive. He didn’t have enough free time to learn about the news of the day or the underlying politics that govern them. Every day that I worked with him he worked hard for every dollar paid to him but working hard wasn’t helping him make any progress in his life.

I’m all about personal responsibility but when your severely restricted in your free time you start bypassing activities that are important to personal growth. I generally read or write for 2 hours a day. This keeps me informed and constantly expanding the capacity of my mind since I can’t afford to finish school currently. I’m married and my wife has an excellent job considering (since she lacks a college degree) this affords us the ability to persue a large range of activities.

The Solution Section: (If your going to bring up a problem offer a solution)

The concept that you have to pro-actively fight for your way of life is essential. Look a George Soros the man is spending money right and left for causes that are actively damaging the ability of the upcoming generation to actually prosper. He has a vision and he’s actively working to accomplish it. A critical portion of Tea Party activity needs to be centered on recruitment and education.

The recruitment portion needs to be two fold. It needs to draw the hard workers to jobs where positive sustainable wages are present. My dad once made the comment “The difference between greed and capitalism is Christianity.” As employers (which a lot of these small business tea party attendees are) paying the lowest amount possible for labor looks great on the books but at the end of the day it is going to come back to bite you. The masses that are now at a negative tax rate (Earned income tax, Welfare, Food Stamps, ect…) still get to vote and conservatives seem to oblivious to this fact.

Example:
25 Employee Restaurant.
1 GM $45k/year + bonus
3 Other Managers $40k/year + bonus
6 Cooks $8/hr
3 Bartenders $12/hr
12 Waiter/Waitresses 3/hr + tips

This makes it such that 7 (Managers + Bartenders) people “might” make enough to make positive progress if they spend responsibly. The other 18 (Waiters + Cooks) people probably have a lot of difficulty making ends meet even if they are hard workers. The point I’m making is that by paying people by the minimum of the law you are actively growing the portion that will vote for progressive wealth redistribution because they have no chips in the pool.

18 > 7!!!

Sadly by the time I make a decent wage(being in the same boat as my co-worker $9/hr at part-time is barely enough to pay my bills) and can afford to spend my disposable income in proactive ways it will more than likely be to late. There are hundreds of thousands of conservative small business owners which need to realize that they are going to be put under if they don’t start making moves now to protect their welfare.

If I had 5 million dollars:

1. The creation of an independent job skills index report. You have to take the SAT/ACT to get into college. There’s no standardized test for the unwritten job skills. How durable are you? Willing to come in sick? How hard do you work? Are you pro-active? Creativity? Reliability? If there was a optional testing service that you could attach to a resume to give an employer a measure of the employee independent of previous perspective. A fancy Harvard degree can oftentimes be defeated with common sense.

2. Organize a Union based around 9-12 principles. Again this is a pro-active issue. If you look at the Unions available there aren’t any that could generate a cohesive bond that helps both employer and employee. As it currently stands it can take moving mountains to get rid of one single employee. If there was a Union that was will work to streamline the logjam with features like: A simple best of care contract where lawsuits aren’t allowed, ability for the union to remove poorly performing members/employees, wages tied to company performance, union dues tied to a 401k plan. Right now there’s no reason to help the company other than to get as much possible from it before it dies.

3. Organization of business with similar 9-12 values providing discounts to each other. Again this comes to the fact of wasted profits on insurance. If two parties need millions of dollars of insurance to make a deal since they can’t trust each other to make the situation right then why even do business? Some might say this is a type of protectionism and by definition it is but hiring/buying from people that are going to make charitable donations to the ACLU is a choice I want to make (and not buy from them).

The other issue at the core is that slowly we are losing the ability to actually make choices determined on our personal values. Take Equal Opportunity Employment laws they effectively make running a private business that wishes to discriminate impossible. By discriminating I will quite possibly lose the most proficient individual for a specific task but that’s an acceptable lose when it comes to a moral issue.

Thank you for taking the time to read my rant.
Taskmaster.cyning@gmail.com