Fast Food Employs 4,866,651 Americans 1
The current minimum wage is $7.25 per hour in 14 States with five states having no minimum wage Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi and with Georgia having a minimum wage of $5.15 per hour. Raising it to $15 per hour as proposed by President Biden and the Democratic Caucus is railed against by Republicans as destructive to businesses and would cause mass layoffs. The Republicans hide their activity against the poor under this false flag of business laying off workers because of more expensive labor. This is the Republican’s mantra but in reality they misrepresent how companies work for their own political gain. The simple concept to understand is that businesses are not in the business to go out of business. This is true, even with the majority of profits going to the owners and to support the owner’s lifestyle usually at the expense of the worker.
Many so called ‘Right to Work’ States provide for a company to layoff of workers for no reason whatsoever. This makes it the decision of easiest and least resistance by any business to immediately cut wage costs where they cannot cut fixed costs such as property or payables. If your business depends on labor to provide its profit then this would appear to ring true to a small business owner or uninformed conservative working voter.
The Junior Senator from Kentucky, Rand Paul recently said;
“The people who lose their jobs first when you hike up the minimum wage are Black teenagers,” said the Kentucky senator. “So, you know, ‘Why does Joe Biden hate Black teenagers?’ should be the question. Why does Joe Biden want to destroy all of these jobs?”2
Senator Rand’s rhetoric plays well in speeches that portray him to the uninformed voting admirers as being a fiscal conservative. Yet, in fact it is the Republican ruse to fool those that believe they are for business as Republicans wage an all out two-front war on poor American workers. It is not about jobs or even about profits. It is about sounding like you are, while creating a Judaeo-Christian image of looking out for the Poor’s jobs.
A study by economist from Princeton University and Charles University in Prague in fact found that what Senator Rand falsely warns against is not what happens. In their study of 10,000 McDondald’s franchises over 300 minimum wage increase from 2016 to 2020 it was found that the cost of labor from increased minimum wages just is passed on to consumers in the form of more expensive products.3 The Owners do not lay off workers but actually pay over the minimum wage to retain workers from competing businesses. The businesses make on average $1.8million per restaurant in the US.4
Corporate America has not been taken in by the Republican attack on the US Hourly Labor Working Poor. McDonald’s executives announced that the company would no longer lobby against minimum wage increases. The president of the US Chamber of Commerce said that he was open to the idea of raising the pay floor.
Large corporations such as Amazon already pay $15 per hour minimum. Amazon states that 26.5% of its employees identify as Black/African American.5 Target pays $15 per hour minimum with 15% Black/African American employees.6 7 Many others have followed suit to this level or well above the $7.25 wage level. All of these companies are in the business of staying in business.
Of note; the dominant number of states allowing hourly wages below the federal minimum wage level are Republican run states. Workers with wages at or below the federal minimum made up 1.9 percent of all 82.3 million workers age 16 and older hourly paid workers. That is roughly 1.56 million workers paid the lowest wages.8 272,000 of these are ages 16 to 19 years old. Republican Senator Rand is found this to have slanted his terror commentary alleging Democratic ambivalence toward Black teenagers with the intent to camouflage his attack on the issue. He intends his xenophobic jargon to bring some sort of divisive alarm to his audience that the Democratic advancement of a minimum wage hike is racists. He hides that 1.2 million US workers, not teenagers, are paid at or below the $7.25 minimum wage. This includes 1.16 million white hourly workers, 278,000 Black hourly workers, 70,000 Asian hourly workers and 292,000 Hispanic or Latino hourly workers.8
Republicans opposed wage increased by 199 votes against the 2019 Raise the Wage Act.9 Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), who chaired the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions in 2019 stated that the committee is not consider the bill. Now that they are in the minority in both houses Republicans, like Senator Rand are trying to justify their attacks on the poor attempts to make a living.
Even candidate President Trump was reviewing the minimum wage increase. When asked he replied; “Wages have gone up more than 3%. That’s a very low number, the $15, and I am actually looking at that. But beyond that, because that’s just an artificial number, much more importantly, because I’d like to get people higher than that.” The fear or worship of Trump has not phased the Republican’s newly found conservatism on this attack since Biden was inaugurated. This is seen in the current debate on Biden’s American Rescue Plan which includes a minimum wage increase .
Republican Senator Joni Ernst said on the Senate floor. “A $15 federal minimum wage would be devastating for our hardest-hit small businesses at a time they can least afford it,” The same false rhetoric as Senator Rand’s without the xenophobia from the Senator that did not know the price needed by her own Iowa’s soybean farmers to remain profitable. Obviously, she does not know about business in Iowa.
The real problem is that not only do Republicans not know what it takes to keep a business in business they attack the effort to make a wage that brings people out of poverty with a vengeance. But It is the effort to attack safety net programs that support the poor that is most underhanded by The Republicans in their two prong attack against the poorest Americans in the name of conservatism.
“Millions of able-bodied, working-age adults continue to collect food stamps without working or even looking for work,” then President Trump said in 2018.10 The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, provides free food to some 40 million Americans, or about 12 percent of the total U.S. population. “Our goal is to move these Americans from dependence to independence and into a good-paying job and rewarding career.” Trump stated.
But what are those jobs? Are they the jobs the Republicans fight against a decent living wage. The answer is absolutely. The Second Front of the Republican War on the Poor is the most powerful and tragic. Republican like to think of themselves as fiscal conservatives. With that they do not like government money spent on helping people. Oh, they may think they give at their church or help the local food bank is worthwhile but to have their tax money spent to help others and not for bombs or themselves is socialism. Just as Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren’s quote on the main page of this blog.
Socialism is political and social philosophy where the state runs/determines production and a range of economic systems in a country. Conservatives in a political sense use the mantra ‘this is Socialism’ when effort is made for a safety net program or letting federal funds to help the poor. The attack goes on and on out of the mouths of Republicans. They have used it since the days of Communism and Iron Curtain days to scare their supporters into compliance with the thought of attacking the poor as lazy dependent individuals who do not share their American dream. Socialist or Communist is the attack phrase used by conservative politicians to attack any and all who want to help the poor. This effort by the Republicans is singularly their closest example of repression of the poor to that of a Military Junta.
“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.” – Hélder Pessoa Câmara
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) warns about their political rivals being in office. “The Senate Democrats would…enact all these crazy socialist … policies.” 11 Joseph McCarthy, another Wisconsin Republican railed against the Red (communist) Menace in the late 1940’s and early 1950s. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) calls Democratic President Biden a corporatists which is both a feint for a call out of socialism as well as an anti-Catholicism incantation.
Any effort to provide for the welfare of the poor is described as socialism by Republicans. While the similarities of this exact style rhetoric compared to authoritarians and dictators in the past century is alarming, it is the message of conservative politics to attack the poor.
Actions can speak louder then words in the case of Republicans use of the deficit created by their own tax cuts to slash the social safety net. In an all out war on the poor, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wis) often gave speeches that the GOP plans to cut federal health care and anti-poverty programs because of a deficit.12
As far back as Herbert Hoover (Rep. President 1929-1933) the mantra was the same. He asserted that he cared for common Americans too much to destroy the country’s foundations with deficits and socialist institutions.13 He believed “given the chance to go forward with the policies of the last eight years (under Rep. Calvin Coolidge), we shall soon with the help of God, be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation”
Hoover’s sentiment meant well but did little to stop the onslaught of poverty from overcoming the nation. His approach was to stimulate each state to move to improve their economy and for private sector funds not federal funds. It did not end well and took the Democratic Administration approach of Roosevelt to stop the onset of the country’s slide into poverty.
The Republicans will be quick to point out that in 2019, around 4.2 million fewer people were living in poverty in the US compared with the previous year. This marked the lowest rate of 10.5% of the population in poverty since the 1950s. The Trump administration took over a poverty level already in decline since 2015 from 15% to around 12.7% was quick to brag about the 2 point drop.
The largest drop in poverty in the US came under the leadership of Democratic President Lyndon Johnson and his ‘War on Poverty” initiative. Johnson stated, “Our aim is not only to relieve the symptom of poverty, but to cure it and, above all, to prevent it”.14 The US poverty rate dropped from 17% to nearly 13%. Almost 4.7 million people were lifted out of poverty. Johnson’s effort established many of the safety net programs of today.
The US may be the richest nation but it continues to struggle with a poverty problem. From February to June 2020:The number of non-elderly individuals living in families with combined weekly earnings below the poverty line rose by 14.1 million (28 percent), from 51.0 million to 65.1 million. The number of children in families with below-poverty earnings rose by 4.9 million (34 percent), from 14.4 million to 19.4 million.15
The Republicans and their politicians will say they support the “War on Poverty” program initiatives. They are ‘Christians after all’ might be the reply. The question is why then are they are conducting a two front assault on governmental efforts to reduce poverty. It is time their is a stop with the charade and start really supporting the effort to ‘banish poverty from this nation,’13
For the needy shall not always be forgotten, and the hope of the poor shall not perish forever.
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