I’ve found in life that just about anything the government has a hand in, is bound to get screwed up. I’ve seen people freaking out that the unemployment rate has gone up to 5.7%. Yet when Bill Clinton was president 5.5% was considered full employment and in June it was at 5.5%.

I guess the big question is what changed, what caused the jump?

One thing that changed was an increase in minimum wage. Minimum wage went up 70 cents.
When the government steps in and decides how we should run our businesses, we as business owners have to make changes to adjust to their stupid laws.

If I was an employee I’d much rather become an asset to my employer and get paid on my own merits rather than the government forcing my boss to pay me more. Of course the above problems belong to the US and I have to say that I love the US government. They help in alimenting my competition by passing law after law that hinder the ability of website owners to compete in an open market. Of course the funny part is the number of American people that want to pass even more laws that would hinder American business even more.

For example, a couple years ago a group of web designers wanted the government to step in and regulate the web design business. Set up a minimum requirement that a web design business must meet in order to sell websites. While they think this would be a way to eliminate competition, I saw it as a way to eliminate them. Had the government done that, the business owner would have to increase his cost to pay for the school and other regulations that the government would have imposed. Since I’m not in the US I would have not been affected and my prices would have stayed the same. Making it much easier to take their customers from them and increase my monthly income.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve got stupid laws here in Colombia I have to work around. And those laws, that were made to help the employee, have a direct negative impact on almost every employee I hire.

Let me explain.

Here in Colombia, the government in all their wisdom passed a law that said any employee that works for you for more than 3 months gets a tone of benefits along with bunches of money if they decide to quit or I decide to fire them. My past employees took total advantage of this law, some even quitting once the money built up. Then my accountant told me that the government fires everyone they hire, every three months and hire back the employees from the previous three months.

Now I do the same.

The people that got hurt where the people the law was made to protect. Had the government stayed out of it, my employees and many others would have a steady income year round but with the exception of a few that is not the case.

The reason for the rise in unemployment is because the government decided to step in and help out those people, whom on their own are unable to make more than the minimum wage. If these employees deiced to become an asset instead of a minimum wage earner, they’d have nothing to worry about. And if the government stopped trying to help them, they’d still have a job.