If you want to reduce “dependency” then pay higher wages
by David Atkins
Bill Maher calls it right:
When it comes to raising the minimum wage Conservatives always say it is a non-starter because it cuts into profits. … You might think that paying people enough to live is so self-evident that even crazy people could understand it. But you would be wrong. …
Michele Bachmann is not only against raising the minimum wage, she is against having one at all. She wants said “… if we took away the minimum wage … we could … virtually wipe out unemployment … because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level.” …
And naturally Ted Cruz agrees. Ted Cruz thinks it’s a good thing that when his Cuban father came to America he was paid fifty cents an hour to work as a dishwasher. …
When did the American dream become this pathway to indentured servitude, this economic death spiral where workers get paid next to nothing, so they can only afford to buy next to nothing, so businesses are forced to sell cheaper and cheaper shit?
Consider the fact that most fast food workers whose average age by the way is 29 … are on some form of public assistance which is not surprising. When even working people can’t make enough to live they take money from the government.
This is the question the Right has to answer. Do you want smaller government with less handouts or do you want do you want a low minimum wage because you cannot have both. If Coronel Sanders isn’t going to pay the lady behind the counter enough to live on, then Uncle Sam has to. And I for one is getting a little tired of helping highly profitable companies pay their workers.
We don’t have a dependency problem, we have a wages problem. We don’t have an entitlement problem, we have an inequality problem. We don’t have a supply problem, we have a demand problem.
It’s pretty easy to figure out, really.
h/t Egberto Willies at Dailly Kos