No, this is not yet one more instance of our popular series of items we see in west coast news sources which one would not expect to see in a Texas, or, well, a Fort Worth, Texas news source, if Fort Worth, Texas actually had news sources of the sort one is able to read at multiple west coast locations.
No, what I was thinking when I saw this headline was how the right wing nut jobs opined idiotically back a couple years ago when Seattle started raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, with the RWNJ's making up nonsense about restaurants going out of business within a week. When the new minimum wage had not yet gone into effect.
And now, several years later, just a few weeks ago I read an article detailing the dozens upon dozens of new restaurants which had opened in the Seattle zone in the past year.
And now this ongoing boom of construction, which apparently, if the right wing nut jobs were right, which they never are, would be seeing even more construction cranes if Seattle had not gone with that economy crippling increase in the minimum wage.
Meanwhile, in Fort Worth, Texas.
Oh, I guess this is can also be one more instance of our popular series of items we see in west coast news sources which one would not expect to see in a Texas, or, well, a Fort Worth, Texas news source.
What is the minimum wage for restaurant waitstaff in non-booming Fort Worth? Is it still a couple bucks an hour, with the rest of the earnings to be made up by tips?
How many construction cranes does one currently see in the downtown Fort Worth zone? Or in the area north of downtown Fort Worth which has been floundering most of this century with what is basically an imaginary economic development zone, currently struggling to build three simple little bridges to connect the Fort Worth mainland to an imaginary island.
How many construction cranes are currently in build mode on that imaginary island?
Fort Worth regularly loses out in any type competition to attract a corporate headquarters to town. It does not take a rocket scientist level urban planner expert to see why. Just that ongoing eyesore of slow motion construction which has become America's Biggest Boondoggle would be enough to scare off any successful corporation looking to re-locate, or open a satellite headquarters.
And to stay on this comparing Fort Worth to Seattle theme, which I know the Fort Worth locals love.
About the same time Fort Worth had a TNT explosion ceremony to celebrate the start of construction of those three simple little bridges being built over dry land to connect the Fort Worth mainland to that imaginary island, Seattle began boring a tunnel under its downtown, using what at the time was the world's biggest boring machine.
The Seattle tunnel project had a four year project timeline, just like Fort Worth's simple bridges. The Seattle tunnel ran into a snag in the form of the boring machine hitting unexpected steel. This delayed the tunnel boring for about a year.
Meanwhile the Fort Worth bridges also quickly hit some sort of never disclosed obstruction which stopped construction for over a year.
The tunnel project in Seattle was fully funded, fully engineered, directed by qualified project engineers. This past week the removal of the Alaskan Way Viaduct began, In less than a month the new tunnel is expected to open to traffic, a little over four years after beginning boring.
Meanwhile, the Fort Worth bridge project is now not projected to be completed until the next decade. The Fort Worth project is not fully funded, is not fully engineered, and is not directed by a qualified project engineer, but is instead directed by the un-qualified son of a local politician, who was hired so as to motivate his mother to secure federal funds for Fort Worth's not fully funded project, a task the mother has largely failed at delivering.
But, Fort Worth keeps re-electing the woman, an instance of what is known as the Fort Worth Way. Or as some locals call it, Fort Worth Nincompoopery.
Maybe Fort Worth should mandate raising the minimum wage and see if that helps raise the town out of its floundering doldrums...
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