The Buffalo News reveals today that a new national testing program is underway to certify the readiness of potential employees to flip hamburgers.  Potential entry-level employees can take a 3 hour test and receive a certificate that states, “yes, my synapses do fire!”  The test will apparently certify that a person has commonsense.

The grant-funded five-week classes include the same soft skills addressed in the new national credential. Pfohl offered this sample scenario that some workers need instruction for: What do you do when you’re alarm doesn’t go off and you’ll be late for work?

Some, Pfohl said, don’t know to call work. Instead they stay home.

The whole program is a symptomatic treatment while ignoring the causes of the problem.  The causes are the failure of public education and the minimum wage.  Both problems could be easily fixed without creating another government program that sucks the money out of our wallets at an ever increasing rate.  Government training programs aimed at the “disadvantaged” have been an abysmal failure, there is no reason to think this one will be any better.

If I was an employer, or making hiring decisions, I would not put much stock in a certificate issued from “passing” this 3 hour test.  Basically the government is admitting that there are a significant amount of people that employers can’t justify hiring at the minimum wage.  The government, instead of abolishing the minimum wage, will probably increase it, further adding to the problem.  If the minimum wage were eliminated, employers would have the option to hire people at a lesser rate enabling the employee to gain real life skills necessary to progress up the wage scale.

Education is the other canard in this equation.  Public education is failing.  Studies have shown that choice in education rectifies that problem.  Choice is can be provided through a system of vouchers and tax credits.  Instead, our infinitely wise government continues to throw more money at public education. 

The government’s real goal seems to be to keep itself growing, no matter what the cost to taxpayers.

Click here for an indepth analysis of why the minimum wage is a failure.