There has been an awful lot of hub-bub across the country (particularly in my state) about minimum wage increases and the debates that inevitably ensure as a result. The outrage, confusion, finger-pointing, and often ill informed populous pointing fingers at their own society over their financial woes is always a juicy read and treasure trove for roving internet trolls (not unlike myself….to some degree). I figured this would be a great place to start.
I have often said that one of the greater problems in our society are the problems within the problems that are hiding in plain sight. Everyone is so busy arguing about a solitary issue without thinking twice about the intricate entanglement of bigger problems that feed into it. None of the problems we face as Americans stem from a singular source, yet that is what those at the top would have you believe.
Take note to example conversation involving the debate surrounding minimum wage increase to $15 dollars an hour:
Internet Know-It-All #1: Minimum wage must go up because people cannot afford the cost of living as it steadily increases and wages stay stagnant without working themselves to death! *lists 3578375893482 things that are too expensive* People have the right to afford to live!
Internet Know-It-All #2: Minimum wage increases will just inflate the cost of living when big business has to pay more for labor, burger flippers shouldn’t make as much as college graduates, and minimum pay for minimum work (one of my personal favorites). The list goes on.
It blows my mind that this is even a debate. The good news is that I think this debate will die out the more the new generations muscle themselves into the game and the traditional and modernly unrealistic ideal that one must work hard and can move up to make more money and that McDonald’s is a job for high school kids to earn extra cash dies out with the boomers. In the meantime, the point stands that at some point in our society, people were made to think that it is completely acceptable for a billion dollar corporation to be allowed to pass their financial burdens onto the consumers by gauging the public with inflation while paying starvation wages for it’s massive work output.
We Americans have a very difficult time blaming the right people. For some reason, we would rather sit down and scream at our neighbor on food stamps and section 8 who works 2 jobs and 60 hours a week for being poor instead of the big boys at the top who are perfectly content and allowed to pay wages so low that these people need social assistance in the first place without criticism from the people who made them rich in the first place.
My question for you today is this: In the year 2019, why is this still acceptable? Is it because the corporations practically own congress? Is it the systematic dumbing down of the American public education system over the last several decades that has led to a significant drop in ability to critically think? Has their marketing schemes to get us to fight amongst one another really been this effective?
Bottom line, if your concern is the costs of goods and services sky rocketing as a result of livable wage increase, then you need to start holding accountable lawmakers for allowing monopolies to flourish. Think of these corporations in terms of being a restaurant owner and we are the servers…the restaurant doesn’t want to pay livable wages, so they pass the buck onto their customers in the form of guilting patrons into paying their salaries via tips (much like making the government pay for the working poor’s groceries via food stamps).
Some food for thought.
Thoughts?
-Relyks
Relyks Revelations 