McDonald's, upset at Seattle, Washington's new law that will (eventually) make the city's minimum wage $15 an hour, is suing the city, citing the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution. That's the "Equal Protection Clause", if you're scoring at home. That Amendment followed up the 13th which freed the slaves, It was more than just chronology it was to make sure people understood that they had to start paying black people now. Gotta dot those t's and cross those i's especially after brutal wars fought over people just not thinking things through. Really now, if you have to ask why you shouldn't own people, you just haven't thought things through. Maybe you can't?
Well, McDonald's thought things through inside out, upside down and backwards. That is why they can cite an amendment largely designed to protect black people after slavery, to protect current corporations from being cheated out of profiting from the current form of slavery- the barest minimum wage currently allowed by law. Corporations are people too, my friend. It's insane but, the law isn't always sane. We'll see if this works but, even before Citizens United, corporations tried to make it look like the 14th applied to them too. "Citizens United"? Golly, doesn't it just sound like it's about us folks? Yep, but only because it's supposed to. It's like "right to work" doesn't suddenly grant people who had previously had no right to work, the right to work. It simply means stupid people have the right to make less money with fewer or no benefits. Not too many people go for that but, if you label it as "right to work" and tell people that democrats hate it, they'll sign up for it whether they like grits or cheese.
Seattle didn't raise their minimum overnight. I think it's gradual over three years. So, no one's payroll department imploded the next day. Republicans hate the minimum wage and always have. They've predicted the end of the world with each meager increase and have spent untold millions fighting it. The minimum clearly has not kept pace with inflation. I think republicans were smart enough to realize that making it lag woefully behind the cost of living, they could more easily fend off the inevitable big jumps that democrats might try to pull off in the future. Well played, you fucking assholes- well played!
See? Doubling the minimum all of a sudden freaks people out. I can see that. It makes college educated people cry about such a raise adversely affecting the price of their Big Macs. It makes those people say also that the people who put together their Big Macs "aren't worth that money". They don't even actually pay these people out of their own pockets but, they want a say in what they make. I reckon it's the thought that counts with these thoughtless fucks.
Real republican conservatives don't want their to be a minimum at all. Fifteen is too high and the $10.10 that Obama is pushing is too high, and the current $7.25 is too high but, $2 an hour would be OK...if that's what the free market dictated. They are all about the free market. Hey- the free market could decide it's worth $20 an hour to assemble Big Macs and they would cheerfully go with that- because the free market made that call, not a government. That's how they claim that works.
Well, the free market is kinda like believing in God. He looks good on paper but you can't see him. He gets credit when things go well and he gets the blame when things go bad. And he works in mysterious ways. And everybody wants to be THE authority on what he has to say. God answers to no one.
Eliminate the minimum and see how fast wages drop. Remember- they tell you that wages could go up without the minimum.
Um, they can go up now. Are conservatives confusing "minimum" with "maximum"? Or are they expecting that you will?
You are free to go to your boss at this very moment and ask for more money. He's free to not give it to you. What's he's not free to do is pay you 98 cents an hour instead because that's what he and the other bosses who now compromise The Free Market think is a fair wage. It's a pretty safe bet that they will get together and discuss the parameters of wages and that those parameters will work in their favor about 100 percent of the time.
So, to that end they are suing to see if that will work in case assholes posting on the internet doesn't convince enough Americans that fellow Americans just aren't worth being paid a living wage. People argue that every day on the internet. They think that anyone working for the minimum fucked up and they don't deserve more. Nor do they deserve taxpayer assistance such as welfare or healthcare. So they want to take that away too. Oh, these losers can go to college and get a better job but that's on them too. There's always that option...
But, take away the minimum and the government assistance and how then do these people get on? Well, they don't care about that. Least ways, no one has told them what to care about that. They haven't thought that through. Somehow, that is above their intellectual pay grade.
It's not above the pay grade of business though. They long ago sat down with their calculators and figured every angle of this. It all came out to cheap labor- the cheapest possible labor- yielding what economists refer to as, massive motherfucking profits.
The way I see it is, if McDonald's business plan only works if they can pay their workers sub-living wages, maybe McDonald's out to give up the fast food business and go to college and learn another trade. College is expensive though so, good luck with that. And watch out, Ronald McDonald, that somebody doesn't shove a big, red foot up your ass. Life does that to people at times.
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