Back In The Day..
I go back to the 90’s in my mind and I remember working for a Fast Food Joint making $4.25 an hour. For a bright-eyed 14 yr old boy, I’m in the big leagues! I only worked 4 hours a day and I managed to balance football and studies all at the same time. My friends from school also decided to work there as well. It was my high school crew and we had a lot of fun working there. It was almost a joke to us and we played more than worked. I remember one time I filled my lungs up with helium and got on the drive thru speaker and said “How may I help You!”. Fast food jobs existed in the 90’s purely for teenagers to learn how to earn an honest paycheck. In those years the debate about minimum wage and inflation had no place in my mind.
Where’s The Raise?
As you can see on the chart after each recession wages drop significantly.
Get in my Delorian and travel to the future 2009. Minimum Wage only went up to 3 freakin Dollars! What the fuck! Now it’s 2016 and there is still a debate for raising the minimum wage? face palm. As the years fly by you can see how there is a new class of people emerging in silence. It is the working poor of america. You have american citizens, mothers with children, working at the same fast food joint I worked at in 1994. These “working poor” can barely afford anything unless they are receiving some kind of government assistance.
Starbucks Scholars
Even if you raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour, your still being dupped. In actuality if you were to adjust wages for inflation, minimum wage would be over $20 dollars and hour. Imagine that, corporations are making record profits, especially after the great recession, yet Americans are getting poorer every year as items like food and rent constantly increase. The american worker is 4 times more productive since 1968 when minimum wage was created yet inflation is eating away the value of the dollar but your not being compensated for it. Go to any Starbucks and ask the workers making your latte how many of them have college degrees. I bet you would find a few people who would tell you not only do they have degrees but probably carry post graduate degrees busting their ass to the tune of $8 an hour. Oh don’t forget the student debt.
Corporate Wage 9k p/hr, I’ll Take That!
Republican Speaker John Boehner said, “When you raise the price of employment, guess what happens? You get less of it,” the nerve of this guy. Over half of the members of Congress are millionaires yet they want to tell you how much your worth. James Skinner the former CEO of Mcdonalds made over $9k p/hr hour back in 2012. This shows the disgusting nature of the top 1 percent and there inability to give 2 fucks about their workers or anyone poor for that matter. Inflation increases on average around 2% every year. This is why millionaires and billionaires stash their corporate plunders into Hedge Funds that can get them over the 2% per year to combat inflation. Unfortunately the average american minimum wage worker gets left in the cold.
Corporate Greed Is Of The DEVIL
I’m not saying that you should be rich working minimum wage but all I am saying is pay what you owe. If the majority of the country can’t afford to buy things it would only make sense that these corporations would suffer from this corporate greed…and rightfully so.