A LIVING Wage

In this video, Rep. Dennis Ross (R-FL) tells one of his constituents that he does not support raising the federal minimum wage because it will "hurt the economy" and it will drive up costs. He then goes on to say that the minimum wage isn't supposed to be a LIVING wage, and asks who will pay for it, if we make it one?  A man in the audience raised his hand and said he would be fine with paying 20 cents more for a hamburger.  The congressman really had nothing to say to that.  You know why?  Because at the end of the day, for most big corporations, a living wage translates into only slight increases in the actual costs to their customers.  

That's the point that they don't want emphasized.  So people like Ross engage in fear mongering and trying to scare people into believing that a living wage means someone undeserving is taking something away from working people, and that suddenly, milk will be $20 a gallon.  Here's a newsflash, congressman.  People making minimum wage ARE working people!  The economy needs contributors at ALL levels.  Not everyone has the resources or opportunities to be white collar workers.  And people's lives are not worth less because they make fries or wash dishes to pay their bills.

At the end of the day, what those who oppose a federal living wage really want is to maintain the medieval system of feudalism in which the wealthy are lords of the manor, and the poor are serfs.  During the time of feudalism, it was rare for a serf to be educated.  In fact, it usually only happened with express permission from the lord.  In some places it was banned outright because lords felt that if serfs were educated, they would start questioning the way things were done.  The same line of thinking was used to rationalize and justify banning the education of slaves in the United States.  An educated slave who could read and write would have the means to learn that despite what he had been told, he was a human being and slavery itself was a barbaric institution that was based on racism, an ignorant belief in the inherent supremacy of whites, and a desire to line pockets with profits off the backs of unpaid laborers.  

Clearly, the same feudalistic thought process is being applied today in these arguments against raising the minimum wage.  The "hurting the economy" reasoning is just smoke and mirrors.  The real fear is that raising the minimum wage means raising the socio-economic status of certain classes of people.  It means low-income Blacks, Latinos, Asians and even whites would again have access to a middle class lifestyle. They'll be able to move into neighborhoods that currently are out of their price range.  They will be able to educate themselves and their children.  And most importantly, this new knowledge will make it clear that things are not how they should be.  Education also gives people the ability to influence the world around them instead of just being a servant to it.  People like Ross don't want poor people to step outside their predetermined place in the pecking order because it undermines the economic and political power structure that allows a wealthy few to be in charge.  They don't want poor folks asking questions, running for offices, giving educated news interviews or challenging the status quo.  They don't want poor kids getting the idea that the American dream actually applies to them.  So they spit out this nonsense about how the SCARY the idea of a living minimum wage is.  They want what's left of the middle class to despise and go to war with the poor.  That way the two groups they fear the most are no longer a threat.  

We should question the intelligence and the very humanity of anybody who wants us to believe only a few are deserving of a life outside of poverty or the chance to succeed on a level playing field.  What that really means is that they consider themselves the lords and the rest of us the serfs, so the kind of lives we have should be left up to their discretion.  The last time I checked, this is not medieval Europe.  And it certainly isn't pre-Civil War America.  We have to ask ourselves, if the poor and the middle class are at war, who's watching the rich?  That's right. NO ONE.