Eight Years And Counting
Eight Years And Counting
Over 80% of Americans support a raise in the minimum wage, and only 6% oppose it. Its purchasing power has fallen every year since 1997, and it is worth less today than it has been worth in all but two of the last 48 years.
And yet, yesterday the Senate rejected two proposals to raise the minimum wage (which is a ghastly $5.15 an hour and has not been raised since 1996). By this point an increase is so overdue it hardly seems worth fighting over raising wages a dollar — which is why some people have turned to working for a living wage.
The Kennedy amendment to raise the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour was defeated 46-49, and Santorum’s bill lost 61-38. The latter bill was shamelessly duplicitous. The bill pushed a wage increase (to a whopping $6.25) but would have cut overtime pay by abolishing the 40-hour work week, and would have forced local governments to adopt a 100% tip credit (which means that if you earn tips where you work, you would get virtually no paycheck if your tips equaled the minimum wage).
In and of itself, the fact that Congress has not raised the minimum wage in 8 years is disgraceful. Couple that with the fact that over the past five years they have given themselves raises totalling $28,500 and it is simply un-American.
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I have a feeling we will look back on $5.15 an hour and think, “that was damn good”, as we cash in our scrip at Wal-Mart.
March 8th, 2005 at 7:28 pmThat is what the market will bear (When you own the market).
March 8th, 2005 at 7:34 pmThis is yet another addition to the “new america” that Bush is carving out: No medical insurance, hardly any wage increases, rising cost of goods, energy, and housing prices continue to rise as well.
To not attempt to raise the wages of the working poor, of those who work the hardest in our society is a slap in the face and compeltely without morals.
March 8th, 2005 at 9:19 pmYeah, Congress gets a raise but the working poor get jack.
Not very surprising, though.
Consider for a moment how much contact the average Rep/Senator has with anyone who makes minimum wage — probably zip, unless you count some carefully-staged photo op with some underprivs (don’t stare at the Senator, kids, and don’t try to hug him).
How can they understand what it is like to work two or three jobs just to make ends meet? They cannot.
Too bad we can’t fix the system by going back to a fixed ratio of citizen:representative, rather than a fixed house size. Currently the ratio is close to 674,000:1. If tried to model ourselves after the “shining beacon of democracy” (Iraq!), with their 91,000:1 ratio, we would have something like 1,300 reps instead of 435.
You can bet that at least some of the new blood would have a greater understanding of what it means to work for a living–and would be more apt to pass living wage legislation.
March 8th, 2005 at 9:46 pmAnyone know how the Democrats voted? Block?
March 8th, 2005 at 11:09 pmThat last point Bry makes is THE point for it is not possible for those who have had wealth handed to them to understand what it means to work for wages. Work earns wages; money makes money. Our laws are now being made by millionaires or worse.
March 9th, 2005 at 2:26 amThe minimum wage should be indexed by inflation and set to automatically adjust every year.
For more see:
http://rationalrevolution0.tripod.com/blog/index.blog?entry_id=1008969
March 9th, 2005 at 8:28 amWell…., next will come the return of the poorhouse and the debtors prison, and after that the idea to privatize them. Oh, and how about indentured servants?,…… ahh …. I guess that is already going on in some cities.
Have to go….. going to look into investing in companies that manufacture dog food, should be strong in demand in the future.
March 9th, 2005 at 8:33 amWhat comes to mind when I read this is; the image of the Grinch reaching down the chimney and piiiinching the last crumb remaining on the bare floor……….. in the empty house.
March 9th, 2005 at 8:42 amThe worker has been reduced to a disposable object in the eyes of industry. We live in a disposable society so therefore……
March 9th, 2005 at 8:49 amHow do you identify a future conservative republican in nursery school?
March 9th, 2005 at 9:46 amHe/she is the child who jumps on all the toys chest first and sweeps everything reachable underneath and says,” ALL MINE”. Na na na na
na na!
This administration is right on! Right on target that is to insure the fact that the hard-working middle class fades into poverty! Whenever this bunch suggests how good something will be we all need to THINK exactly opposite and when you get it, THANK Orwell. I shudder to think of 4 more years of the bush cabal!
March 9th, 2005 at 12:53 pmIt’s just the rich making sure the poor stay poor.
March 10th, 2005 at 7:49 pmIf there is a hell of some kind; they are going. I’ll just laugh now.
This can not be reduced to business, it’s the peoples pursuit of happiness at stake.
from:”A Christmas Carol”
The spectre joined in the mournful dirge;and floated out on the bleak dark night.
Scrooge followed to the window:desperate in curiosity he looked out.
The air was filled with phantomes, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley’s ghost; some few (guilty governments) were linked together; none were free. Many had known Scrooge in their lives. He was familiar to one old ghost with a monsterous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant. The misery with them all was, clearly, they had sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.
“It is required of every man,”the ghost returned, “that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so in death. It is doomed to wander the world-oh,woe is me!-and witness what it can not share on earth, and might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!”‘
March 10th, 2005 at 9:22 pm