One of the insidious effects of our slave wage economy is that it has turned all of us into slavers. Just like capital punishment turns all of us into murderers, but I digress…
I will not eat fast food today. Or tomorrow. In fact, I am making the commitment that henceforth, whenever possible, I will only support businesses that pay their workers a living wage.
I say “whenever possible” because, sadly, slave wages are so prevalent in America that will be times when I may not have an option.
You can hardly call them “minimum wages” when they don’t meet the minimum requirements for living. In Colorado, it takes 88 hours of minimum wage wages just to pay the rent on the average apartment (See Wages and Rent). That would be fine if the people making minimum wage and specifically the people working in the fast food industry were a bunch of high school kids who live with their parents. The shrinkage of the American economy means that older workers are stuck in what used to be entry level jobs. “Only 16 percent of fast food industry jobs now go to teens, down from 25 percent a decade ago…. More than 42 percent of restaurant and fast-food employees over the age of 25 have at least some college education, including 753,000 with a bachelor’s degree or higher” ( Facts About Fast Food )
Meanwhile, the average CEO is paid (I refuse to say “earns”) 273 times what the average worker makes (see CEO Compensation Gap ). In 1960, that ratio was 20:1. Welcome to the Ayn Rand economy of the Right Wing Republicans.
Someone who works full time should not live in poverty, especially in a system that produces this much wealth. Minimum wage workers shouldn't expect to get rich. But they should be able to expect that a minimum wage job should meet their minimum needs.
The Right Wingers love to talk about rewarding job creators. Guess what? Ray Kroc – the guy who for all practical purposes created McDonald’s – died in 1984, way back when CEOs only earned 30 times what their average employee was paid. The only thing that the current CEO and other leaders of McDonald's and most other corporations have created has been a self-serving compensation system.
This problem will continue until we have laws that link CEO compensation with worker wages.
If a minimum wage job can’t meet the minimum requirements for life in a society, then it really can’t be called “minimum wage”, can it?
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