As more cities adopt their versions of a living wage, the GOP amps up it's quest to eliminate the minimum. It's amazing, challenging logic which is why, I guess, they have Michele Bachmann be one of it's proponents. She is certain it would lead to full employment.
Well, so would slavery. Duh. Is that anything to brag about? Slavery is society's way of saying we haven't got a clue and we're not even going to try. Where are the slave empires of Biblical times today? Why aren't Greece and Rome running things today?
Some conservative politicians come right out and say that business 'can't afford' the current minimum the way it is now and that doubling it like liberals suggest, would kill the country. I see the quest for $15 as a minimum as a bargaining chip. It make's the $10.10 minimum more palatable to everyone but republicans and greedy employers. Fifteen an hour is what many economists believe the minimum would be if those motherfuckers in the GOP had not fought every increase in the minimum the last fifty or so years. They think a jump to $15 would kill business now but, back in the day, they thought a twenty cent increase would destroy the economy. They just don't want to pay. They are literally penny wise and pound foolish. Whereas you and I know that, the more money poor people have, the more they spend, thus stimulating the economy, republicans equate wages with stealing. Wages cut into profits. They see the $10.10 figure (a near $3 increase) as an attack on profits. Three dollars an hour times X number of hours per week, 52 weeks in a year...equaling tens of millions of dollars that DO NOT sit in a bank in the Cayman Islands. Theft.
They have no shame whatsoever in pleading their case even in the face of obscene $8 and $10 million dollar bonuses for CEO's. They can justify that. That CEO has a responsibility to the shareholders to make a profit.
I've even seen people say (with straight faces) that this is a legal responsibility. Why, he can go to JAIL if he fails to turn a profit....
Sure. He'd be in there with all the Wall Streeters Eric Holder prosecuted....
I understand why big business backs all this. They are greedy and stupidly so. All governments and societies run their course. You may believe Jesus smiles upon America and always will but, ask yourself why Jesus didn't opt to be born in America 2000 years ago and why we haven't been running things since then. Take your time.
The reality is that the world hasn't worked out the perfect system yet. It isn't capitalism any more than it was monarchies or the communism that rose from the ashes of monarchies. Capitalism seems great as it played out on television with "Leave It To Beaver" and "The Donna Reed Show" but a concept of American life like those programs simply isn't profitable anymore. More is the operative word here. The Cleavers didn't want enough more. Aside from a new baseball glove, they didn't know they needed more.
Whatever Ward Cleaver did for a living, he had a lovely wife, children and home to show for it. Back then a man like Ward or the carpenter who built his house had a pretty good life. Back then, Wally and the Beav could have counted on going to college and paying for that with minimum wage jobs. It pains me to mention that because then republicans start saying; SEE! $1.25 an hour IS GOOD MONEY!!!! Ferrerman just said so! Relative to the time, a buck and a quarter was good money. It bought you pretty much anything you needed from a college education to food on the table. Google the minimum wage in 1960 and prices of the same year. Then, consider today's Federal minimum of $7.25 and go shopping. See what you can buy. Something got out of hand but it wasn't the minimum wage....
We expect too much of government and of the rich, because we foolishly assume they know what they are doing because they are successful at it. For the most part they don't. The free market is a nice concept but, if you don't manipulate it to your advantage, someone else will. That's why there is very little free about it. But worse than expecting too much of the successful is accepting too much. That's why "...a responsibility to the shareholders..." is only offensive to people like me and you. We know that responsibility supersedes a responsibility to society in general and we are offended. Your average conservative sees that as business today. John Steinbeck said that socialism never took hold in America because each American sees himself "...as a temporarily embarrassed millionaire..." Lewis Black says the same thing only in the more contemporary vein that each of us believes we'll win the lottery someday. And when we get there, we don't want want the gubmint fucking with our money!
So, we defend the wealthy and even call them "job creators" even though creating jobs (according to their math) costs them money. They know that it's just good business sense to keep labor as streamlined as possible. They tried to elect a billionaire businessman as president just two years ago. They'll try again in two more years, possibly with the same billionaire. Here in Illinois, the republican's are running one who believes the state should be run as a business. Sure- sell off under-performing counties and fire lazy citizens.... Well, he might dream about that but he does advocate eliminating the federal minimum wage. This is what "state's rights" is really all about. Money. Southern people still argue that our civil war was about state's rights rather than slavery but, they are only close and quite a bit disingenuous in their assertion. The American Civil War was the northern states saying that the southern states had no right to enslave people. Slavery was an unfair economic advantage. Oh- an ugly, primitive institution to be sure but, it was all about the benjamins rather than anyone actually named Benjamin. That we have to have a Federal minimum wage law speaks indirectly to slavery. That modern GOP'ers fight so hard to economically enslave Americans speaks more directly to that. They would pay us all less if they could. For fuck's sake they are literally saying this! Worse, they want us to believe it's a good idea!
'Murica! We had a nice run but we got greedy and willingly killed the short-lived American dream here at home. Turns out the real money was in exporting that dream. Who knew?
1 comment:
She's in awesome company! Honesty is quickly ceasing to be this country's best policy. I was quite proud of the Colorado students who walked out recently protesting changes in their schools. We always think history will judge (like with Obama and the horrible Congress who fought him every step of his terms) but, history is written by the winners, regardless of how they *won*.
I thank you for your kind words! Cake sounds like an excellent idea....
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