Friday, January 17, 2014

Minimum Wage Take

Someone wrote that  they thought President Barack Obama was going to step over the fiat line by increasing the minimum wage by presidential elective. They wondered if he knew what he was going to step into if he did.
    I nearly had my head explode. Then I had some wine, thought about it, and instead of cursing the stupid motherfucker, I wrote this reasonable answer to his freaking idiotic comment. This is what I wrote--and I'm sorry if I'm boring you with being a decent person on this blog. It's just who I am.
Forgetting Obama for a moment, I was thinking today of how Costco compares with Sams Club. Both offer the same items. Both have the same business model. Both are winners. Yet Costco pays $15 an hour and pretty much zero off the public dole, while Sams Club pays minimum wage and depends on the public dole to pay for their workers. Why is it that both companies are successful but one has to pay half of what the other pays? The answer is in the word "greed". It's that simple. And so, in real life, there will be no repercussions if the minimum wage is doubled. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, your pizza might go up by a quarter; your burger by a dime. But in all honesty, any thinking person who thinks $7 plus an hour is a living wage--even for a freaking toadstool--is not a thinking person. Companies have to align themselves with the idea that they should not make what they want. It's not their money. They can't do it without workers, which make workers part of the paradigm. And workers are not replaceable pieces of trash. They are people, they have families. They work as hard as a CEO, and if a CEO wants to make two or three or 10 times what a low level worker makes, fine, that's capitalism. IF the CEO wants to make 1,000 times what the lowest worker makes that's NOT capitalism, that's sharkism, and those CEOs should be put out of their misery and mIsery--they have no right--and being in the position does not give them the right. There has never been a brain surgeon who could work a dish washing machine in a restaurant. But there have been thousands of dishwashers who went on to become brain surgeons. If anything, the CEO ought to live at the level of the lowest paid worker for at least several months a year just to know what it's like. And if they did, they'd raise minimum wage in a heartbeat--because dumpster diving to fill out your family's food is not nice and it ain't right. And That's where I am and I'm saying it out loud, way out loud. Cause I'm right on this one and anyone who disagrees is an ass. And I'm right on that too.

1 comment:

Devon said...

Love this post.

it really is that simple of an answer for why big companies don't want the minimum wage increased...Greed