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name: will baker blogrollin' other sites: |
worst-case america
$10,712. That�s the pre-tax annual income of an American who works 40 hours per week, 52 weeks a year, at the current minimum wage of $5.15 per hour. Under Sen. Edward Kennedy�s plan, defeated in the Senate yesterday, that same worker, working the same hours, would have � by 2007 � made $15,288. Thankfully, though, the Republican majority has saved us from this pernicious attempt to reduce the desperation of the poor. I didn�t see it at first, but I had only to attend to the wisdom of the speakers for the majority to see the communistic error of my ways. Check it out: "Wages do not cause sales. Sales are needed to provide wages. Wages do not cause revenue. Revenue drives wages," said Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyoming. Oh. Here�s another good one: When you raise the minimum wage you are pricing some workers out of the market," said Sen. John Sununu, R-New Hampshire. "It is an economic fact, and the proponents of raising the minimum wage like to dismiss this by saying we have a hard time measuring it and the economy is large." Yeah. Of course, I�m not sure what it means to �price workers out of the market,� since workers get paid to work, however little. They do not pay, so there is price. Employers can get priced out of the labor market, at least in theory, but workers cannot. But I wouldn�t expect such silly little reality-based quibbles to bother John Sununu, who�s been a big, loud, lying asshole for as long as I can remember. The hypocrisy of Sen. Enzi�s remark would be funny, if it weren�t so sad. There was a time when sales in this country were booming, and they drove salaries upward at an astonishing rate. It was a time of remarkable productivity and prosperity in America, known as the Clinton years. But during those years, our government, at the behest of business groups worried about rising wages, passed a series of �free trade� agreements to be sure that every American worker would be forced to compete with workers in places where there is no minimum wage. Or medicine. Or clean water. Or democracy. So now our farmers compete with Mexicans. Our computer programmers compete with Indians. Our factory workers compete with the burgeoning and brutal Chinese. Our President gives an approving wink to thousands of desperately poor Mexicans illegally crossing our southern border, because they keep the thumbscrews nice and tight on the American worker. And every day, America becomes more and more like those places. With an economy so deeply integrated into the world economy, Third World patterns of wealth and worker control are developing right here in the First World. Although we are still better off than, say, Columbia, we�re falling behind countries like Belgium and France. By countless measures, from child mortality to broadband access, America is falling out the First World. But let me hush. Nobody likes a Negative Nelly who�s always going on and on about all these �facts�. Wages do not cause sales. Unless you�re talking about CEO compensation. (Nevermind that so many high-paid CEOs have run their companies into the ground with their dipshit business school PowerPoint thinking; Carly Fiorina clearly didn�t �cause� much in the way of �sales�, but it was still important for her to walk away with $42 Million in severance pay after nearly wrecking what was once one of the great American engineering and technology companies. But hush, shhhh, there there. Justifying the wages of wealthy upper-class whites is another discussion, requiring a whole different set of spin tactics.) Of course, these are all the same tired arguments that have been trotted out every time the federal minimum wage has been increased. In fact, they�re largely the same arguments that were deployed against the introduction of a federal minimum wage to begin with. Amazingly enough, however, neither the minimum wage nor various increases thereto seem to have destroyed American enterprise in the various ways the doomsayers have predicted they would. Sen. Santorum introduced an alternative proposal, which would have increased the federal minimum, though by less. It was also packaged with a number of fairly hilarious �pro-business� provisions. Under the current Fair Labor Standards Act, all businesses with revenues over $500,000 and/or doing business across state lines must extend federal standards such as minimum wages and overtime pay to their workers. Santorum�s bill would have raised the cap to $1 Million, which means that while 1.2 million workers might have seen a wage increase, some 6.8 million would lose their minimum wage and overtime protections. Santorum also tacked on a �flex time� provision that basically said that your boss can work you 80 hours this week and not pay you overtime, as long as you get the comp time off next week. His bill also would have made it possible to pay NO wages to workers who work for tips. And, just to complete the overall sweatshop ethos of this proposal, he tossed in a FEDERAL BAN on state and city minimum wages that exceed the federal minimum. Didn�t this used to be the party of state�s rights? Funny how under their watch, the Federal Government has arrogated such vast power and authority to itself. Anyway, Santorum�s bill also failed. The House leadership is apparently �calling the shots here� according to one commentator, and they won�t have any of this nonsensical mollycoddling of the poor interfering with their ruthlessly social-Darwinian and anti-Christian economic agenda. Besides, they have important business to attend to. Like passing legislation to make it harder for persons in bankruptcy to escape their debts to impoverished and struggling firms like Citicorp, who�s CEO took home $44,613,277 last year. Let�s keep our priorities straight here. You just put a big, hefty chunk of your $10,712 a year into your personal retirement savings account (the Program Formerly Known As Social Security) and get back to work.
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