In an article about the allegedly horrific scandal of South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s 14-year-old daughter working in the gift shop of the South Carolina state house, there’s an inadvertently damning indictment of our current economy:
“Even these minimum-wage jobs in this economy can be pretty tough to find,” said Meredith McGehee, policy director for the Washington, D.C.,-based Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan think tank on government issues, including ethics. “While this is probably a small-potatoes case, it creates the appearance of a conflict of interest and strikes me as a politically tone-deaf decision.”
A half-dozen ethics experts and legislators declined to comment on whether the job constituted nepotism when contacted by The State. Most said they did not want to comment because of the involvement of Haley’s child.
For those who care, the governor’s daughter makes $8 per hour, and works 20 to 25 hours per week cleaning and stocking shelves.
So which is the bigger scandal and concern – that the governor’s daughter works part-time in a state job that pays 75 cents per hour above South Carolina’s minimum wage, or the fact that about three years after the recession allegedly ended, minimum wage jobs are tough to find?