Democrats campaigned on a promise to raise the minimum wage for American workers, a popular issue among voters.
House Democrats fulfilled that promise by pushing through a bill that would raise the minimum wage to $7.25 per hour from $5.15 per hour.
Now, Republicans have ensured that taxpayers are going to pick up the tab.
Senate Corruptpublicans blocked passage of the minimum wage increase for a week, demanding that $8.3 billion in tax breaks are included in the final language of the bill. The breaks would benefit the richest corporations in America.
So thanks to Republicans, you will pay for the raise in the minimum wage rather than Wal-Mart, McDonalds and the other companies that deserve to be penalized.
Essentially, the GOP is making Middle America pay the wages for employees at corporations like McDonalds. Joe America is writing the pay check for employees at Fortune 500 companies. How does that make you feel Joe?
The CEO's of these corporations can afford to buy little islands for Spring Break while you're counting pennies and now the Senators that YOU voted for are fixing the laws to make you pay wages for the richest corporations! They are FORCING YOU to pay $8.3 billion in wages for employees that work for million and billionaires?
The $8.3 billion in tax breaks has to come out of somebody's pockets.
Had the Senate passed a bill identical to the one passed by the House, the Limousine Class would have paid for the minimum wage raise.
It's an outrage that Senate Republicans are getting away with this tax hike. Not even the Senate Democrats have the heart to expose this indecency, and the media has glossed over the implications of $8.3 billion in tax breaks for "small businesses," which is an aphorism for McDonalds.
For 20 years, Republicans have castigated Democrats as the party that raises taxes. That is a lie. Both parties raise taxes. The Democrats raise taxes on the greedy and disgustingly wealthy; Republicans raise them for the middle-class and the poor.
It is Republicans who have inflated the national debt with excessive giveaways to their corporate backers, like Halliburton.
If you asked voters in Oregon if they wanted their Republican Senator, Gordon Smith, to raise their taxes for a minimum wage hike, they would be outraged. If you asked the voters in Nebraska (Sen. Hagel), Oklahoma (Sen. Inhofe, Coburn), Alabama (Sen. Sessions, Shelby), Tennessee (Sen. Corker, Alexander), South Carolina (Sen. Graham) Idaho, Utah or any other folks from so-called Red-blooded states how they feel about paying for the minimum wage raise, they would probably pull out a gun and invite you to leave their property.
Well, these senators, the "fiscally conservative" senators that RED AMERICA elected, have burdened all of us with an $8.3 billion tax hike for the minimum wage raise.
This tax on us is outrageous, but what's worse is the backhanded, slimeball way they slipped the tax past our noses. I'd like to see Sessions, Corker, Alexander, Shelby, Hagel, Smith and the whole Lott of them campaign on the platform of taxing their constituents so that the Millionaire Class doesn't have to pay their employees.
The minimum wage hike is absolutely necessary, but Americans supported the hike because they expect rich corporations to do their part.
The issue of the minimum wage is being used to distract Americans from being fighting mad about the war in Iraq.
Now for the mechanics of an artificial wage hike....
Employee wages are part of the cost of doing business(along with a myriad of other costs like fuel, health insurance, supplies, and heating & cooling). When the cost of any area in a business operation goes up....then the price of any good/service that business produces will also increase. No business will voluntarily take a hit to their profits if it can be avoided.
There is an overwhelming correlation (maybe even a cause & effect relationship) between low wages and poor education & skill diversification. The manufacturing industry in this country has been in decline since the mid-1980's. Even then, the preachment to workers was "get more education & diversify your skills if you want a good paying job in the future". Well, the future is here and the preachers were correct.
Since I am a teacher, I have a window into the future. Every day I see students who do not care for the education which they are being provided by their communities. Sadly, I also have opportunities to see parents who do not care for their childs education. Over the last decade of my career I have noticed the following situation develop: The poorly educated child becomes the poorly educated adult. When they apply for a job they struggle to read and complete the job application. They further struggle with problem solving and math (like calculating change from a customer purchase). I could go on for a long period of time discussing the work related challenges for the poorly educated, including child care and transportation issues.
So....how much does someone who has limited education and skills deserve to make in wages? I believe that decision lies between the employer and the worker. The worker is not under a compulsion to work for low pay, they could find a job that pays a great salary (This is America the Land of Opportunity)....Wait...Now I remember why they have low wages....poor education & no skill diversification.
When employers are complelled to raise pay, strange things begin to happen which are detrimental to the plight of the low wage worker. When the cost of doing business goes up the employer must respond or close the store. Seems to me that no job is worse than a low wage job. When the cost of business goes up the employer must respond. Seems to me that if the price of goods & services increases then low wage workers pay more for the things they need (which keeps them poor). When the cost of doing business goes up then employers must respond...if you eliminate jobs to meet the bottom line then everyone works harder and someone loses a job. Artificial wage hikes actually contribute to inflation of prices which, once again, hurts the people you want to help.
If the government wants to help low wage workers it would tie a wage hike to mandatory education and skill diversification, then provide some assistance in acquiring it.
Raising the minimum wage is not free....CEOs are not going to take a pay cut to fund it(in the real world).
so who's going to pay for it? Americans will thru higher taxes or prices or maybe the low wage worker should have a major role in correcting the root cause of their situation....poor education and lack of skill diversification.
Thanks for your attention......Mr. Brian Mathes
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Brian Mathes (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 41 comments)
on Wednesday, January 31, 2007 at 11:16:56 AM
Disinformation reigns! - More pay for the poor is BAD!
What PR flak came up with the term "artificial wage hike" for referring to raising the minimum wage? You might as well call the Secretary of War the Secretary of Defense and "dead and wounded innocent civilian bystanders" just "collateral damage."
The working poor who were forced to accept $5.15 an hour by circumstance, lack of skills and education, and whatever other personal necessity, would have earned just $10,712 per year at 40 hours a week. Raise that by just a dollar an hour and that person gets just $2080 more for the whole year's labor. That is still well below the poverty line. Would you have the resourcefulness to scrape together a decent existence (after working a 40 hour week) from that kind of wage in the harsh reality of the real world anywhere in America? I seriously doubt it.
Artman writes: "So....how much does someone who has limited education and skills deserve to make in wages? I believe that decision lies between the employer and the worker. The worker is not under a compulsion to work for low pay..." Unskilled workers are the most vulnerable people in our society and are by definition under compulsion to take any job that they can get or make a living by other means. Taking advantage of people's inability to move, illiteracy, language skills, timidity, absence of hope or higher aspirations, youth, or desperation might seem like the right thing to do for some people. After all the brutality of circumstance compels the unfortunate soul to work for minimum wage and real marginal profits result from conveniently one-sided agreements with the impoverished.
I'll bet the libertarians in the audience think that abolishing the "artificial" minimum wage would be great and that while we are dreaming, we should also abolish all federal regulatory standards and let individuals and smart, well-moneyed interests negotiate prices and rates as if labor were a commodity price dictated purely by laissez faire, free market forces. Libertarians are dreamy LUNATICS who generally fall right into the hands of the corporatist machines like the World Trade Organization who would love to eliminate OSHA safety standards, environmental safeguards, as well as any labor protections. I think the libertarians and free traders would be happy if unskilled laborers in the USA were paid no more than unskilled laborers in Bangladesh – that would be fair to them.
Artman also writes: "...Seems to me that no job is worse than a low wage job..."
Some job is certainly better than no job at all, but this kind of simplistic black and white thinking limits the discussion to a limited case of a challenged and distressed business caught in an unchanging market on the brink of profitability. Most businesses won't operate for long in the red and one or several adjustments have to be made to run profitably. Responses are not limited to layoffs and pass-through price increases as some would have you believe.
Layoffs are just one of many possible responses to an increased cost of labor.
Executive salaries and bonuses may be reduced, executive perks and freebies may be curtailed, a company may be made more efficient with existing resources, advertising budgets can be reduced or made more efficient, the cost of the delivery of goods and services may be reduced in creative and inventive ways, and of course the price of goods and services may be raised to cover the additional cost of production or delivery due to an increase in wages.
But according to Professor Timothy Taylor of Macalester College in his Business and Economics lecture series many studies of minimum wage increases show that a modest increase of the minimum wage (by say 10%) would only decrease employment among unskilled workers by about 2%. Put another way if 98 out of 100 people get a modest pay raise and two people lose their jobs, those two people have a chance to look for something better than they had before and 98 people get a little breathing room. Further wages earned by other workers earning slightly more than the minimum wage also experience an associated bump in salary level with an increase in the minimum wage. And most workers who have very little, end up quickly spending all that they have on goods and services and thereby boosting the local economy even further.
Artman further asserts: "Artificial wage hikes actually contribute to inflation of prices which, once again, hurts the people you want to help." Wrong. The price of milk and eggs isn't correlated with rises in the minimum wage. Pricing and inflation are complex phenomena which are affected by lots of different factors. Misleading statements about the contribution of the cost of labor minimizes many other major pricing factors such as the cost of materials, scarcity of supply, demand, and when mentioning inflation huge global forces like the massive issuance of hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars of government backed securities. His statement overreaches to falsely conclude that paying the least fortunate in society a little bit more will be somehow bad for them.
I think I agree with Artman that education is the key for all of us to advance together, but then he goes off about linking a "wage hike to mandatory education and skill diversification" and I start hearing echoes of Chinese re-education and forced labor camps. Why dangle imaginary carrots in front of an unskilled work force? Linking wage hikes to reprogramming and vocational training would be a waste of time for employees who don't have the wherewithal to learn more skills and it would be counterproductive to employers who rely on an unskilled labor force.
Simply require more pay for the lowest paid workers so that the playing field is level for all industries that rely on that labor and give the poor a couple of more dollars to buy groceries and pay their bills. All profitable businesses will find some way to pay for their laborers, even if it means sticking it to the government by getting their friendly Republican Senators to give them tax breaks for something they should be doing anyway.
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Tim Riley (7 articles, 4 quicklinks, 6 diaries, 126 comments)
on Wednesday, January 31, 2007 at 7:04:26 PM
Exactly, the issue isnt important to him, so he discounts it
A raise in the minimum wage is important to millions of Americans whose wages are directly or indirectly affected.
There are definitely things that are going on that are intentional distractions by the President and other Republicans to keep attention away from Iraq. Since minimum wage increase is a Democratic initiative, this does not follow.
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Steven Leser (193 articles, 37 quicklinks, 32 diaries, 1298 comments)
on Wednesday, January 31, 2007 at 8:37:42 PM
i fouynd the authors article on the rich making us pay for their tax breaks highly enlightening.At first when i saw the Republicans have tied a rider to the minimum wage bill so the poor couldn"t get a decent non slave saalary without the rich getting more tax breaks as just old business because the republicans are sneaks like that.the author brought up points I hadn"t even thought off in Republican deceptiveness.By giving the very people who pay slave wages tax breaks they pay nothing extra.We the people who do pay our fair share of taxes will then have to make up the 8.6 billion dallor deficit with what i am sure will be a new round of users fees like taxes on to heating bills or whatever the Republican congress can think up.Oh shades of Ronnie Regan.We the tax payers are getting doubly screwed,it has been truly said the working man pays for the support of the rich.I am beginning to think socialism may be a better form of government
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liberalsrock (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 113 comments)
on Wednesday, January 31, 2007 at 11:56:13 AM
"Capitalism is not a success. It is not intelligent. It is not beneficial. It is not just. It is not virtuous and it does not deliver the goods. In short, we dislike it and we are beginning to despise it. But when we wonder what to put in its place we are extremely perplexed." ~ John Maynard Keynes
Perhaps the lovers of socialism should consider living in a country like France. You think you pay high taxes now to support the elites, do your homework. Socialism creates a large, permanent underclass; it erodes and diminishes the middle class; it gives the elites what they want (a huge chasm between them and the lower castes). Worst of all it creates a huge segment of the poulation which becomes totally dependent on the public dole.
Thanks for your attention.....Mr. Brian Mathes
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Brian Mathes (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 41 comments)
on Wednesday, January 31, 2007 at 2:19:04 PM
If you believe the party rhetoric you are as feeble as the so called "representatives" you voted for believe you are. The Democrats have no more intention of raising the minimum wage than the republicans do. When you refer to the deceptiveness of the Republican Party as though the Democrats are honest you sound so naive it makes me ill. You can't throw a stone up in the air in Washington without it landing on someone with a major cover up, it's just a matter of who's more popular to slime at the time.
Grow up, people. Social issues are a smoke screen.
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Bob Fitzgerald (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 62 comments)
on Wednesday, January 31, 2007 at 5:06:18 PM
The Dems stalled for eight years on the hike. Tables were turned, less than a month it's over. Who's looking out for the little guy. BTW look at the liberal states and their insurance laws. They favor the insurance companies.
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Bob Fitzgerald (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 62 comments)
on Sunday, February 4, 2007 at 12:57:44 PM
