Bare Minimum

Let's briefly discuss the federal minimum wage in the United States of America, now that the Democrats have taken control of the White House and Congress, and Biden has promised to fight for a 15 dollar minimum wage.

There's been, and there still is a heated debate in America over the minimum wage. With many Americans, politicians as well as citizens, being "freedom absolutists", talk about a minimum wage often invokes extreme responses like it's an infringement on free trade akin to communism. Opponents of a minimum wage argue that it would hurt small businesses, the so called mom-and-pop stores and restaurants, and that it would discourage new upstarts because they just can't afford to pay their employees 15 dollars per hour. My view on this is very simplistic; if you can't pay your employees a wage on which they can live, you shouldn't be in business at all, or you should do all the work yourself. Isn't that what capitalism is all about? If you can't make it, make place for someone else who can. Capitalism incentivizes employers to pay as little in wages as they can lawfully get away with, which is why child labor and starving wages were the norm just one century ago; do we want to return to those days? Realistically though, there are many ways in which a higher minimum wage can be implemented without hurting small businesses, for example by taxing the big corporations like the McDonald's and Wall Marts' of the world and subsidizing mom-and-pop startups. It is the large "job creators" (I hate that expression, as they are anything but "job creators" and would replace every employee with a robot or computer today if they could) who would and should be affected by raising the minimum wage.

A short note on unemployment. Unemployment is necessary for employers to be able to get away with paying starvation wages; if you don't want that job, there's 1000 more like you who would gladly replace you. Much of capitalism's mind-games are centered around the employees' fear of becoming unemployed. Employment is just one tiny reason why capitalism needs to be heavily regulated, but we've also seen time and time again that such regulation is only a temporary solution; almost all the gains made by FDR have been undone, for the capitalists own politics and politicians through their extensive army of lobbyists. They'll eventually succeed in pushing through the laws that are good for them, not for their employees. And it's not even that they are evil; they act like the capitalist system compels them to act, in a way they can't help themselves and are as much slaves to that system as the rest of us.

At the moment, the federal minimum wage stands at 7.25 dollar an hour, which is far from a living wage, and it has been like that since 2009; never even adjusted for inflation. But the fight over a 15 dollar minimum wage has started a decade ago, so even that doesn't amount to a living wage in 2021; with inflation in mind, the minimum wage should in fact be over 20 dollars an hour by now. So, in short, even if the Democrats manage to legislate for a 15 dollar minimum wage, that wouldn't be enough. Maybe if they combine it with free healthcare and free education it would be, but we know Biden's wing of the Democratic party doesn't believe in either of those. Please watch the below linked short video that explains why this discussion is so sensitive in America in particular, when the rest of the "civilized" west has since long understood the necessity of paying a living wage to the working class. One very simple thing to keep in mind is that workers are also consumers, and if those consumers can't consume, your economy is bound to fall flat on its nose. So, for any capitalist market economy to survive, having a living wage as one of its regulatory components is the bare minimum requirement...

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