It’s hard to believe that there is anyone who would like to abolish the federal minimum wage law but it has been on corporate America’s wish list since it was created. Being overwhelmingly pro business almost every candidate in the last Republican Presidential primary expressed a desire to do that very thing. Think they have very little chance of accomplishing this little dream of theirs?
Don’t write them off just yet because they’ve done it before. Convincing millions of America’s poorest citizens that the only recourse or source of power that they truly have, the government, the courts, the unions are in actuality their greatest enemies. Vilifying the EPA, OSHA, the SEC, the departments of labor and education are just a few of the planks in the Republican’s “small government” platform designed to weaken the power of the populace to the point where only money will have a voice in public policy. Allowing their friends and the corporations they own to do as they wish with no interference from the commoners. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in the “red” states of the south. These states are consistently at or near the bottom of almost all of the economic indicators of financial health. (at least they lead the nation in obesity and diabetes) Lowest in education. Lowest in wages, opportunity, and standard of living. These same states (most of which are so called ‘right to work’) do run high levels of distrust and anti government, union, and court sentiments toward the very organizations capable of leveling the playing field and giving them a voice in their own destinies.
Economics has never been my strongest subject, in fact it bores the crap out of me. But when it is blatantly obvious, even I can see when it is time for a change. The states that have continually voted Republican for decade after decade have seen little to no improvement in their conditions, yet they stick with the right who tell them that education is elitist, that worrying about the environment is crazy, and that what is good for the wealthy is best for them as well. That anything even slightly resembling Social policy is totally un-American and completely evil.
If only it weren’t for those other ‘pesky’ states, around New England and the northwest, many of which have instituted a state minimum wage in excess of the federal standard. Almost all of these mostly “blue” states have a better standard of living than their southern counterparts. So how can the Republicans continue to claim that a minimum wage is bad for the economy and businesses? Easily, the same way they have convinced them that all of their other resources were bad for them, by lying.
It’s just another example of the top 1% continuing assault on the middleclass and working poor that has gone unchecked in this country since the late seventies. The working classes has seen their wages creep up only slightly, remain stagnant, or in terms of actual buying power have declined in the last thirty years while executive and ceo compensation has skyrocketed by several hundred percent in the same time period. This disparity is possible only because those at the top (who see their employees only as a financial burden) get to decide how profits are distributed, and more and more they are deciding that they want it all.
Despite the fact that the workers are the ones who make the products and perform the services for which consumers are willing to pay. No customer would pay for what these managers and executives do so their compensation is taken from profits earned by the labor of others, by this definition, management is on public assistance. Those at the bottom get the wages, and those at the top walk away with obscene levels of income.
If you lived in a state that was controlled by one party for decades, and saw not the slightest improvements in that time, wouldn’t you try something new? Not these guys, they are steeped in old timey- and in the Republican’s new Holy Trinity; Unfettered Capitalism, Blind Patriotism, and Jesus. In that order.
