Dear America,
I'm vacationing on Cape Cod this week, and my daughter came down from Boston to spend some time with her mother and me. While she was here, two seemingly unrelated incidents occurred. First, my daughter suggested that my wife should by an Apple lap top to replace the old one she has...which by the way is old enough that it is essentially useless thanks to the continual changes in operating systems and the proliferation of applications that require the updates. I told her that I don't buy Apple products, though my wife may feel differently about Apple. Second, a few hours after my daughter left for home today, I read a two day old issue of the Cape Cod Times, and it contained a transplanted article from the Washington Post. The article was about the $15 minimum wage, specifically the fact that the cost increase needed to pay fast food workers at McDonalds that wage would be about $.17 per burger...$.30 per meal. Next to the article was a picture from a protest a year ago at which a marcher carried a sign that read, "The CEO of McDonald's maes $9,245 per hour!" You don't see the connection between the two things? Let me explain myself.
A year or so ago, the New York Times ran a series of articles about the Chinese company that builds most of the iPhones, iPads and other Apple technological superfluity to which we are addicted. During the height of the conversation inspired by the articles, one of the journalists responsible was interviewed on NPR, and he pointed out that Apple, which sells these devices for exorbitant sums that have resulted in tens of billions of dollars in Apple's bank account, saves approximately $5 per unit by manufacturing those devices in China. The workers are forced to live in dormitories and work sometimes seven days a week for wages that wouldn't conform to the laws of the various American states where there are more than enough workers to do the work...but for a living wage and while living lives in their own homes with their families. But what does Apple care. There is money to be...banked. Do you see the connection now? Both the Times' articles and the one in the Washington Post demonstrate a central fact in the debate that I believe will decide the next presidential election, which will be centered on the issue of whether CEO's deserve to make 400 times or more than the workers who produce the goods from which their corporations profit. That fact is that the people responsible for the prosperity of the nation, and for that matter many nations, are living lives of "quiet desperation" while the people who have managed to rise to the top by standing on their shoulders reap such wealth as to make their compensation not just excessive, but Sybaritic, and thus not just venal but sinful, and mortally so. Forgive me for waxing sanctimonious, but I feel that we are long past the point at which enough corporate greed was enough.
As the Republicans claim that we need to reduce corporate taxes so that their wealth can trickle down on us in the form of low paying jobs without security, providence in the form of health care, retirement funds, "leisure time" for things like paternity and maternity much less vacation and a quality of life that makes life worth living, corporations take not just more than they need, but more than they can even use. Oh, they do want to reduce all of our taxes too, but that won't lead to better lives because keeping 90% of less-than-enough instead of 85% doesn't remedy the fact that it is less-than-enough. As for the concomitant reductions in corporate taxes, all they will provide is higher bonuses for the people who make decisions on the golf course and call it work. But let's set aside the '60's hippy screed and look at the rationales involved. The objection to a $15 minimum wage is that there will be fewer jobs available for working people, but consider this. If we take a fast-food restaurant as the paradigm, the question that claim raises is, if McDonald's hires fewer workers, who is going to flip the burgers? Someone has to. Who is going to slide the UPC codes past the scanner on the checkout line? Someone has to. Who is going to clean the CEO's office? Someone has to, and you can be damn sure it isn't going to be the CEO, so I say this.
Give the workers the $15 minimum wage, even at the risk of there being fewer low paying jobs out their if their bosses decide to flip the burgers, run the cash registers and clean the offices themselves. I think we are all willing to take the risk.
Your friend,
Mike
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