Re: US Minimum wage vote

[modeski]

Re: the Nas of the World entitled US Minimum wage fails to rise again.

That's bloody shocking. Well, not "shocking", but terrible. The world's only superpower, one of (if not the) richest nation/s on earth and the government baulks at getting the working poor one notch closer to the right side of the poverty line. Not entirely unsurprising, given that Bush only governs for the richest in society.

The Iraq debacle has already cost hundreds of billions, and I don't doubt that it'll go into the trillions before America decides enough is enough. That would have funded the minimum wage rise many times over.

Good on the democrats for refusing to tie in this paltry measure with yet another tax break for the ultra-rich. If it wasn't for the relatively low cost of living in the USA, minimum-wage earners would be forced out onto the street. They're barely hanging on as it is. Disgusting.

[Naselus]

modeski said:

If it wasn't for the relatively low cost of living in the USA, minimum-wage earners would be forced out onto the street. They're barely hanging on as it is. Disgusting.

Read Nickel and Dimed, and you'll realise most minimum wage earner are on the street. Most minimum wage earners in the USA have two 8-hour a day jobs. Even working 16 hour days, they can't afford to get a mortgage or pay the deposit on an appartment, so they have to pay $20-30 a night to stay in flea-bag out-of-season motels. During the holiday season, most have to live in their cars.

Now, is it me or is that not life? Is that, in fact, slavery?

[HStorm]

Also see the first part of Morgan Spurlock's spinoff series of the Super-Size Me film, the excellent Thirty Days.

I'm not sure even slavery is the right term, although what it really is is no better.

So much of the USA lives in a delusion of paradise of course. The problem is, especially in a climate of right-wing domination, it's very easy to hold onto that delusion, because the easy temptation for those higher up is to blame the poor for their own problems. By accusing them of 'laziness' (how many Texas oil barons work 16 hour days for $7 an hour?) of being 'wasteful with their earnings' (hey, what could be more profligate than paying for just enough food to avoid starvation and for a roof over your head?), and of being 'undeserving of better due to lack of talent', which is a grotesque presumption. Almost as saddening as the needless human strife is the astonishing waste of potential in so many people; one can only guess how much so many of them might have been able to give to the world. It's the creation of an underclass almost totally cut off from the Government's interest and help, and shunned as an embarrassing stain on the environment by the rich and powerful.

So I honestly think the real word to describe it isn't 'slavery', but 'apartheid'.

[Naselus]

No, I'd still stick with Slavery. Apartheid literally means 'skin seperate', where as this has nothing to do with colouration.

Instead, we have a situation where by workers are forced to work for 16 hours a day (only 2 hours more than the black slaves on St. Kitts used to), and in return they are granted food and shelter, even if it's actually only in the form of just enough money for thm to afford it.

Has anyone seen the simply wonderful 'The Yes Men'? Do you remember the part when they set up a WTO 'discussion' on the benefits of 'free' labourers to slaves? They point out that if you use slaves, then not only do you have to spend money aquiring them, guarding them, feeding and sheltering them, etc., you then have to face the inevitable discontent among a workforce that doesn't want to work for you.

Compare that to the 'free' labourer. The Free man pays to get to your country himself, particularly if your country has just sold a vast stock of weapons to guerilla forces near his home village. He will accept wages that are too low to effectively feed himself on, need not be guarded, pays for his own home and will do almost anything to keep his shitty job.

It's slavery in disguise. If we must choose a different term for it, then I think we should forget the racist overtones that apartheid brings to mind, for although many of the minimum wage aerners in the US are black, it's not the colour of heir skin which keeps them there. "Apartgeld", sperated by wealth, would be more appropriate.

[HStorm]

In fact, apartheid literally translates simply as 'apartness' or 'separation'. But the term apartgeld is a clever one, so let's stick with that.

My hatred of neoconservative doctrine lies most centrally - though not exclusively of course - in this issue. As I said above, the delusion of the infallible paradise of America is sustained by right-wing prejudice. What makes me especially angry though are the neocon attempts at justifying the prejudice when you expose it for what it is. Not least because they contradict the very delusion they're trying to prop up; -

You point out to the Republican that most people on the bottom rung actually work far harder than almost anyone higher up, and the response will be something on the lines of, "Well, so what? Try to help the poor and you'll create a culture of dependancy, and that'll do nothing but harm to the economy." Even if this argument were true - which it isn't especially - it is of course a very loud acknowledgment that the USA is not heaven-on-Earth or anything like it, and that far more of the population lives below the poverty-line than in prosperity. But even after that, the neocon will still insist that this is not true and that the USA is paradise from top-to-bottom (except the bits with Liberals, gays and black people in them of course).

[modeski]

It's an act in frustration trying to debate this issue with people on the "winning side". I've seen the first episode of 30 Days, and was really quite shocked at what people have to put up with in the America of 2006. It's one of the great unreported crises of the time, I think.

There are so many things wrong with that country, but we hear little about them in the public arena. Comparitively benign issues such as gay marriage and flag burning (important as they are), are given a prominent airing, while politicians remain resolutely silent on the fact that there is a huge underclass. Perhaps a lot of it is "out of sight, out of mind". If the media doesn't report on it, and the Beltway politicians and pundits don't see it in their everyday life, and the ordinary working men and women are denied a voice to air their woes, then the probem simply disappears.

Like you say, HStorm, those on the lowest rung often work the hardest. All of us here have worked at the lowest-level jobs at one time or another. I never worked so hard as when I worked for Safeway cleaning toilets and making pizzas, crappy wages, no priviliges, having to forgo breaks and time off etc - and that was just to get by. Thankfully I find myself equipped with some education and skills to have pulled myself off of that bottom rung, but I'm still years off being able to buy a house or not worry about paying bills.

I have been wondering why more working poor don't speak out and demand change, but I wonder if it's not because they're too damn tired working all the time! Work, eat, sleep, work is the daily routine for tens of millions; thoughts of class warfare or union activism are often furthest from people's minds while they struggle to feed their family, or put a roof over their heads.

That's the way the powers-that-be want it though. Keep the people suppressed. I do take a little solace in the fact that it can only get better.

[HStorm]

Part of the reason why the poor don't demand change is that, yes indeed, they are crushed by drudgery. Historically that has almost always been the case, and was considerably more pronounced in the era of serfdom.

The problem has mounted again in recent times because of the fashionable view that Socialism has 'failed'. It possibly has, although of course the people saying this are making four very dubious assumptions; -

1) That because the Left failed to create a just society before, it cannot succeed in the future,

2) That Capitalism hasn't failed as well, in spite of Capitalist countries all having the enormous underclasses that we've been discussing,

3) That a recognisably Socialist country has ever truly existed.

4) Because Socialism hasn't worked yet, it's not worth trying to make life better for the underclasses, nor are we meant to.

None of the above ring especially true.