And, of course, politicians chosen by rich people will not raise the minimum wage. The federal minimum has remained at a painfully low $7.25 for a decade. Now, it's a poverty wage. It means a person who works full-time cannot support himself, and certainly can't provide for a family. In Washington, D.C., and other expensive cities, some full-time minimum-wage workers are homeless. The substandard minimum wage pulls down all wages.
Similarly, politicians chosen by the rich will not significantly increase the $23,660 overtime threshold under which all workers must be paid time-and-a-half for hours beyond 40 in a week. Former Labor Secretary Tom Perez, now chair of the Democratic National Committee, proposed in 2016 doubling the threshold to $47,476, which would have enabled an additional 4 million workers to qualify for overtime pay.
Often these are workers given fancy titles like assistant night manager and paid $24,000 a year so that their fast-food restaurant bosses can require them to work 50, 60, even 70 hours a week for no extra pay at all.
For these families, the overtime pay would be extremely meaningful -- in ways that are incomprehensible to families that can dish out $15,000 to $75,000 to cheat on the SAT.
Fast-food corporations, including CKE, owner of Carl's Jr. and Hardee's, opposed the proposed overtime threshold increase. The CEO of CKE at the time, Andrew F. Puzder, worth $45 million, wrote an essay condemning the increase and explaining how millions of low-paid workers with fancy titles should love to work extra time without extra pay because it gave all of them the opportunity to work their way to the top like one guy at CKE did one time.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a lobby group for rich corporations, filed suit against the increase and scuttled it. So now it hasn't increased in 15 years.
A new labor secretary last week offered a much stingier increase. Alexander Acosta proposed $35,308 as the threshold. Only about 1 million additional workers would benefit if the number were that low. And instead of automatic increases every three years, the Labor Department would consider whether to raise it only every four years, no guarantees.
This is not good policy for working people. It is, however, great policy for rich people, who, as a result, keep more of the profits produced by the labor of underpaid people.
It means continuing the cycle of 1 percent staying rich and 99 percent denied opportunity. And that means the wealthy can continue to bribe university officials to admit their unqualified scion.
There's no reason to take heart from the fact that prosecutors stymied one specific college admission scam. It is illegal to pay a SAT proctor to alter test scores. It is not illegal, though, to buy a science lab for Harvard or a humanities building for Yale with the hope that the family name prominently engraved on the edifice will sway admission officers when they see the same moniker on an application.
It's no shock college admissions are rigged for the rich. The whole economic system is rigged by the rich. Until working people change that, their opportunities and those of their children will continue to diminish.
This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License
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