Alabama Republican Introduces Bill to Eliminate Overtime Pay

I wouldn’t have believed it had I not read it for myself from the official Congressional website.

U.S. Representative Martha Roby, a Republican from Alabama’s 2d Congressional District has introduced H.R. 1406, officially named the “Working Families Flexibility Act of 2013” which would END the requirement of the Fair Labor Standards Act for employers to pay Time-and-a-Half to employees for every hour worked over 40 in one week.

http://beta.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/1406

The Congressional Budget Office has reported on the bill, and in part wrote that:

What does an unregulated, “free market economy” look like?

{Ed note: This post is dedicated to: governmental deregulators, those whom subscribe to the school of Austrian economics, and their defenders, the ivory-towered theorists of the Mises Institute, whose pie-in-the-sky ramblings are errant and theoretical only, having no real world solutions to real world problems – and whom, ironically enough, have never created anything of any value.}

Let’s travel to La Riconada, Peru – once an outpost for men in the Andes of South America, now an increasingly populous village/town/city, which at approximately 30,000 population, and 16,732 feet above sea level, is reputedly the highest elevated human habitation in the world.

Because of an increase in the global price of gold, physicians & attorneys among others, have flocked to the area, seeking their fortunes, to work in a gold mine in the area.

Here are some interesting photos… and heart-wrenching descriptions of what it is like for people to live in an area that has no formal economy, no taxes and no government services.

Electricity and cell phone service are reliable but sewage and trash collection are non-existent. Even with the harsh conditions, the city’s population keeps growing. Photo by Michael Robinson Chavez/ Los Angeles Times.