Go West, Young Welfare Recipient

I thought this sentence was a parody — or at least a cynical paraphrase — when I first saw it on Instapundit, but it’s an actual quote from a news story:

Record low unemployment across parts of the West has created tough working conditions for business owners, who in places are being forced to boost wages or be creative to fill their jobs.

Here’s more from the article itself:

Established baby boomers, including retirees, have been moving into Montana for the mountain views and recreation, bringing with them money for new homes that fuel construction job growth, said Swanson.
Along the way, younger people have moved away searching for bigger paychecks as the state’s wages still lag behind other areas and are slowly increasing overall. Now, the aging work force is unable to expand to meet the demands of the job market, Swanson said.
He said the problem is compounded by the fact that employers, accustomed to paying relatively low wages, have been slow to increase salaries. Montana wages have historically been among the lowest in the country, and still rank near the bottom. The silver lining for workers is that wages are now growing at the third-fastest rate among U.S. states.

Kinda makes a Rhode Islander wonder whether it mightn’t help our disproportionate number of poor people make the healthy move to a booming economy, as in Montana, where one can start at over $20,000 a year working for McDonald’s, if we were to cease contributing so much public dough to their inertia.

0 0 votes
Article Rating
5 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Greg
Greg
16 years ago

I suggest we put an ad in the paper offering any welfare recipient in the state a one-way bus ticket to Montana.

Rasputin-Khlyst
Rasputin-Khlyst
16 years ago

Let’s send the corporate welfare thieves there too…and incompetent pols like Gov Disaster Don, who has no vision and whose idea of development is to create a below average number of mostly minimum wage jobs and be proud of it.

Greg
Greg
16 years ago

If we sent the incompetent pols away we’d have nothing but janitors and media people at the State House.

Mike
Mike
16 years ago

Why should they leave when they can babysit a few of there friends kids and make a living off the taxpayers?

SusanD
SusanD
16 years ago

You are half correct, Rasputin: good paying jobs are being driven out of the state – by the Democrats in the General Assembly.

Show your support for Anchor Rising with a 25-cent-per-day subscription.