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Thursday's letters: With skills and effort, pay will rise

 
Published Sept. 17, 2014

For too many, working more means making less | Sept. 16, commentary

With skills and effort, pay will rise

The minimum wage used to be something young people received as a starting wage for summer jobs. As they grew in their jobs and proved themselves to be reliable and became more experienced, they got raises. As the particular job got more demanding, requiring even more experience, training or schooling, a smaller portion of the job market qualified to apply, and because of that the pay scale for that job was higher.

People willing to put in extra effort to develop skills and make themselves more valuable earned more than those with minimum working skills. So we wind up with basically two groups: maximum-effort employees and minimum-effort employees. If a maximum-effort employee is not climbing the ladder of success at his present job, he should find another job. Minimum-effort employees need to start joining the maximum-effort people.

It goes back to supply and demand. If your job can be performed by virtually anyone in the workforce, then you really have no marketable skills. Wages are what an employee receives in exchange for his job performance with his skill set. If he has no particular skill set, whose fault is that?

Get a skill, learn a trade, find a field you can excel in, then show up and use those skills every day for your employer. You will soon be earning much more money.

Jeff Reckson, St. Petersburg

War now tests Obama | Sept. 17

A failure of tactics

President Barack Obama has little understanding of military tactics. In Afghanistan, he told our enemy when we were leaving; now he tells ISIS we will not put boots on the ground. You never tell your enemy what you will or will not do.

As Adolf Hitler learned from the Battle of Britain, you cannot defeat an enemy without boots on the ground.

As a former fighter pilot, I have one question for the president: If an American pilot is shot down and bails out over ISIS territory, will you put boots on the ground to rescue him or will you leave him to be beheaded?

Harold H. Dean, St. Petersburg

Don't repeat past mistakes

How soon we forget. From the recent letters about the president, one might think we were better off with George W. Bush.

From the disastrous, unnecessary war in Iraq to the failure to go after al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden to the loss of 80,000 jobs a month in the financial and housing collapse, the Bush presidency was a failure. And let us also not forget that, unlike President Barack Obama, Bush inherited a healthy economy from President Bill Clinton. There is not one area where Obama has not done a better job than Bush.

Obama has made mistakes, as all presidents have, but the last thing we need is advice from Dick Cheney, who was responsible for much of the mess Obama inherited.

It would be great to see politicians and the public focus on what is good for our country, instead of what is good for a political party or some particular political point of view.

Robert Monroe, Tampa

Florida's poor need legal aid Sept. 13, editorial

Aid dollars pay dividends

Gov. Rick Scott has vetoed $7 million in funding for Florida's legal aid societies over the past four years. These societies provide low-cost and no-cost legal services for working-class and impoverished citizens who can't afford civil court representation in matters such as domestic violence, elder abuse, access to veterans benefits, consumer fraud and juvenile law.

Due to the Great Recession, other sources of funding have dried up for legal aid services, yet Floridians still experience costly legal difficulties.

In 2010, the Florida Bar Foundation hired Florida TaxWatch to do a study on the effect of funding legal aid societies. TaxWatch determined that for every dollar spent, nearly $14 in economic activity was generated.

Since there are many more lawyers graduating from Florida's excellent law schools than there are jobs, I strongly encourage the next governor and the Legislature to provide adequate funding to hire new lawyers to do a "Peace Corps" type of program of one or two years of service. Florida's legal aid societies could administer this program and maintain the integrity of the funding.

This will provide work and valuable experience for new graduates, give Floridians important and meaningful services, increase the number of employed Floridians, and improve the quality of life throughout the state.

David John Audet, Tampa

Scott's judges rarely black | Sept. 15

Going beyond skin color

Yet again the Times sees public policy through a racial lens. Your infatuation with the so-called "diversity" of police officers and now judges leads one to conclude that your definition of diversity is race-based.

Secondly, the governor understands that the role of judges is to interpret law, not create it. He finds judges not based on the color of their skin, but on their understanding of the limited role the judiciary plays in our democracy.

Andy G. Strickland, Seminole

Mountains and molehills

The headline reads, "Scott's black judges are few." If you look at the included statistics, you find that Gov. Rick Scott's black appointees fell from Charlie Crist's 8 percent to about 6 percent. This is hardly a headline-making statistic.

Just as accurately, the headline could have read "Scott appoints more women jurists that Crist" or "Scott appoints three times more Asian judges."

Why does the Times repeatedly tilt even news articles into anti-Scott campaign ads?

Michael McElroy, Tampa

Highway fund

Make free riders pay

The federal fund to repair highways and bridges is financed by a tax on gasoline and is falling short.

Electric cars get their power from electric utilities and thus don't pay for their use of highways. To add insult to injury, buyers of electric cars receive taxpayer subsidies of a minimum of $7,500.

There should be a surtax on the price of electric cars payable directly to the highway repair fund.

Ronald P. Rowand, Clearwater