Maine’s politicians are always talking about job growth and how we need a growing population to supply the necessary workforce for that growth.

That Maine continues to have a dwindling population is indeed problematic. Having a steadfastly aging one is another difficulty. That many desirable occupations, especially ones with significant financial reward, lie more readily outside of Maine’s borders only adds to the problem of retaining a vibrant younger population who will create jobs themselves or attract businesses that might consider locating here.

The logic is that to retain our best and brightest homegrown graduates from public and private education we need to bring those jobs, which many now leave the state to find, here to Maine. To do that, some believe Maine must provide lower energy costs and generous tax incentives to outside business interests or they’ll continue to do business elsewhere. Many also believe that we should maintain a low minimum wage to best compete with outside economies. Also, let’s reduce income taxes across the board, especially for those that make the most because they’re the ones that pay the greatest share. And, Maine should adopt “right-to-work” laws to “protect” its workers.

All of the above sounds pretty sensible, at least in passing, and pretty much outlines our governor’s long standing economic prescription which he again laid it out in last week’s now reinstated State of the State address. That prescription likely sounds reasonable to many comfortably positioned at the top of the economic pecking order, and even more so by those whose bottom line is enhanced by another person’s misfortune providing low-wage labor.

Many of those out and about trying to find employment here in Maine know all to well that Maine’s minimum wage is far too often the set full-time wage or close to it. Not a temporary training period paycheck of years past, offering teenagers a shot at first employment, but the take it or leave it ongoing compensation for work done by adults with a rightful expectation of being able to secure a living wage in the most prosperous country on this planet. If it was indeed otherwise, affecting only those entering the workforce and not those displaced from previous gainful employment and now struggling to pay their bills, business lobbyists wouldn’t be putting in so much opposition overtime.

Despite specious protests that raising the minimum wage will somehow lower workers’ earning potential, the real fear by those so apoplectic about this ballot measure’s passage is that raising the minimum wage will raise all wages. Gov. LePage continues to argue that asking for more equity from those at the top will actually hurt those at the bottom, and that giveaways to businesses and corporations will eventually lift all boats. That argument has been repeatedly demonstrated elsewhere as a false economic model which when adopted perversely provides greatest economic assistance for those that least need it.

LePage’s surreal logic argues that we shouldn’t raise the minimum wage to $9 or $12 because we should instead be directing all efforts to provide really high paying “career jobs” earning $29 per hour or better. Stranger still, he reasons that raising the minimum wage will drive Maine’s elderly further into poverty, while simultaneously advocating the raising and expansion of sales taxes on those very same fixed incomes, incomes that will never benefit from his other visionary concept of totally eliminating the income tax.

The perennial challenge of finding a solution to Maine’s economic difficulties is that all its variables have substantial chicken-and-egg hurdles. Maine’s economic woes, at the state level all the way down to local municipalities, never seem able to sufficiently surmount the adage that it takes money to make money. As long as I’ve lived here, Maine has always struggled to make ends meet. Then again, being careful what one wishes for, does Maine want affluence so badly as to become more like those states from which more affluent outsiders choose to vacation escape or retire elsewhere?

The primary focus of both major political parties is to continue doing what’s best for the employer rather than what’s best for the employee. Maybe that unquestioned priority needs to be reevaluated. A minimum wage of $15 elsewhere is hardly an incentive for low paid workers to stay here, and “right-to-work” advocacy should mean truly championing workers’ rights rather than being a deceptively named anti-union strategy.

LePage’s other fixation concerns voters’ increasing reliance on ballot initiatives. He actually admonished Maine voters, instructing all that “Maine isn’t a democracy” but rather a representative governance. In fact, Maine is indeed a democracy. Voter initiated ballot questions are our last-ditch direct democratic intervention when our representative form of democracy refuses to shoulder its elected mandate.

Following LePage’s personally defensive but otherwise attack mode address, Senate Minority Leader Troy Jackson underscored that citizen initiatives are a welcomed part of our representative democracy, emphasizing that he himself is a voter, and as a voter he’s also disappointed in our legislature’s job of representation.

Now that’s the truly plain-spoken yet intelligent leadership Maine needs more of.

Gary Anderson lives in Bath.