Subject: Hamburgers and Minimum Wage
| date: | Wed, May 13, 2015 at 1:22 PM | ||
| subject: | Fwd: FW: Hamburgers and Minimum Wage |
Low military pay was not mentioned in the State Of The Union speech. However, increasing the minimum wage was for those fast food employees striking for $15 an hour. Let's do some math: At $15 an hour Johnny Fry-Boy would make $31,200 annually.
An E1 (Private) in the military makes $18,378. An E5 (Sergeant) with 8 years of service only makes $35,067 annually.
So you're telling me, LaTisha McBurger flipper, that you deserve as much as those kids getting shot at, deploying for months in hostile environments, and putting their collective asses on the line every day protecting your unskilled butt!?
Here's the deal, Baconator, you are working in a job designed for a kid in high school who is learning how to work and earning enough for gas, and hanging out with their equally goofy high school pals. If you have chosen this as your life long profession, you have failed. If you don't want minimum wage, don't have minimum skills.
My Two Cents worth, just saying......
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10 comments:
This is highly misleading.
It is true that an E-1 base pay is relatively low. However they also receive housing and food, either directly or through a tax free allowance called BAH and BAS. BAH varies by region with the cost of housing. In San Diego, an expensive market that has a high military presence, an unmarried E-1 Marine fresh out of boot camp will receive at BAH of $1713 per month, tax free, plus about $350 a month for food, tax free. That's an additional $25000 a year, tax free, and it goes up every year and every promotion. So the real "pay" for our hypothetical E-1 is closer to $43000 a year, with more than half of that exempt from taxation.
There are other benefits too: full medical and dental, tax free shopping, GI bill for college, etc.
Maybe this is not enough to pay our men and women in uniform. If you think so, ask yourself why it's so low? Answer: because their compensation package must compete with other opportunities, including minimum wage jobs. A low minimum wage means you can pay recruits less (not to mention other private sector workers). Raise the former and the latter will have to rise to be competitive.
There's also a sad (and cliche) helping of class on class warfare in this post, the same attitude that allows things like slavery and Jim Crow to exist. Too many people are happy to get shafted so long as they have someone else they can look down on.
Also, nice racial dog whistle: "Latisha McBurger flipper". Like I said, these are the type of people who were fine with Jim Crow, because it meant they had someone lower down to spit on.
That wasn't worth one cent, let alone two.
Average fast food wage: $8.00 an hour
Average fast food work week: 24 hours
Average yearly take home pay: less than $9000
Yet right wing dad begrudges even a cost of living adjustment. Kind of a dick attitude, RW dad.
Why do Republicans believe that people who provide services to them should do so for free?
If you have chosen this as your life long profession, you have failed. If you don't want minimum wage, don't have minimum skills.
Most RWDs are bitter, angry, racist old white men enjoying public benefits. RWD has been brainwashed by lying propaganda like this to hate and look down on anyone who might be struggling to make a living these days. What RWD carefully *ignores* are the realities facing all citizens, other than the spawn of the 1% who are well connected, no matter what type of education, skills and training they have.
There's just not that many jobs out there, especially well paying jobs in the white collar sector. There's ample information out there that even the vaunted STEM grads have difficulty finding work because the 1% has rigged and the gamed the system to hire H1(b) workers at lower salaries with fewer or no benefits.
A lot of people have few choices when looking for work. It's outright nasty and plenty disingenuous to diss someone who works in a fast food joint or Walmart or whatever. Here we have citizens who are WORKING, yet RWD is still not satisfied. No, rather RWD spits on these workers and admonishes them that they are lower than low and should not be doing that job.
A very clear example of how the PTB, via their rightwing think tanks, pit segments of the 99% against other segments of the 99%, all whilst the 1% continues to fleece all of us, including stupid, nasty, ugly racist RWD. Fool!
And yes, per usual, this is filled with racist dog whistles, and btw Jim Crow never died. RWD keeps old Jim Crow alive, well and kicking down while kissing up.
Spot-on analysis Ferschitz.
I can't get over the selfishness and disdain the PTB try to imbue in the working class...of other working class people! Regarding a 15 dollar/hour minimum wage, ( other than the corporate greed-heads ) you can bet that the loudest ruckus is raised by those making 16 dollars/hour.
Since economic activity is fueled by demand ( supply-side / "trickle down" having been utterly debunked ) you'd think that even though the plutocrats chafe at the notion of higher wages effects on their profit margins, they would see that not only would increased spending power of the working class drive demands for products and services...but now there would be less strain on the safety net owing to the working poor no longer needing government assistance to survive.
You'd think that, at least logically. But of course the greed-heads can't look beyond the present of next quarter earnings...or their disdain of the working class as a social group.
Sad. Used to be if you had a job, then you were, er, doing your job, and that should be good enough.
Now the Oligarchs aren't satisfied unless everyone is ground under and not allowed to demand living wages or adequate work conditions.
Go look in most fast food joints these days, and you'll note the number of middle aged to older people working there. Why? Not because they're lazy - as this bs implies - but because they can't find anything else. Those jobs are hard work standing on your feet and dealing with the public all day. Yet the Oligarchs - in the guise of RWD - push out the propaganda that this is unworthy work that takes no skill or energy to do... suitable only for high school kids and their "goofy pals." WTF? Even if so, why should high school kids - many of whom are helping to support their families and/or to save for college tuition - not make a living wage, too?
This propaganda is loaded with a ton of kiss up/kick down spin. It is truly sad that the Oligarchs who are responsible for the crash, who rigged, gamed and engineered the system to effect the largest transfer of wealth from the 99% to the 1% in this current era ... can push out this nonsense and have a lot of old white people buy into it and are enabled to feel smugly superior and self-righteously angry about dumb stuff.
Whither common sense and the milk of human kindness? Now even people who work are objects of derision and dismissal by the effectively powerless seeking only to hurt someone lower down the food chain than themselves. Typical.
The irony is that the big corporations pushing out this propaganda to RWD are the big winners, while RWD is the loser.
McDonalds, Walmart, Burger King, Target, etc., all give their underpaid workers the exact forms needed to apply for food stamps and other public welfare benefits because the corporations know very well that their workers cannot get by on the low wages they make.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/13/walmart_n_4267907.html
http://www.alternet.org/labor/apple-walmart-mcdonalds-whos-biggest-wage-stiffer
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2014/04/walmart_employees_on_food_stamps_their_wages_aren_t_enough_to_get_by.html
RWD snarls at the workers that they got "what they deserve!" The joke, of course, is on RWD (and the rest of us taxpayers) who are subsidizing the likes of the greedy Walton heirs, the Koch brothers, etc, who are the true beneficiaries of extremely low wages for their slaves, er, workers. First, they pay such low wages, and secondly, they get YOU, the US taxpayer, to subsidize their low wage workers, and third, they probably pay next to no corporate taxes.
Win, Win, Win for the 1%. Lose, Lose, Lose for all US Taxpapers.
Thanks for nothing, RWD.
All of the above comments are true, but in the end, people end up being treated poorly because they allow themselves to be treated poorly.
Wal-Mart is a lousy place to work. They'll improve their working conditions just as soon as people start refusing to accept what they're offering. As long as people are willing to accept their terms, Wal-Mart will continue to offer nothing else.
I once walked out of a job interview when it became apparent, mid-interview, that it was a lousy place to work. I just said, "I'd like to apologize for wasting your time, but I simply cannot work here." Then I got up and left. This, by the way, was in interview for a professional, white-collar job.
When people start doing that at Wal-Mart, the company will institute better policies. Not until then.
Employers can't mistreat you without your permission.
"Wait!", people say. "Some people have no other options!"
You always have the option not to choose to be mistreated by your employer. One more time: Don't like what they're offering? Don't. Agree. To. Work. There.
All of the above comments are true, but in the end, people end up being treated poorly because they allow themselves to be treated poorly.
Yes and no. Have to agree to disagree. These days a lot of people simply do not have a lot of options. It seems simplistic to me to say: don't work there, if you're treated poorly. As I indicated previously, even grads with high level STEM degrees - allegedly the golden key to open every door - may find it difficult to find a "good" place to work.
A lot of people simply don't have a lot of options for places of employment, and stating that they should quit and find a "better" job is unrealistic.
That's why workers striking for better pay and conditions is another way to address to the "lousy workplace" issues. There's only so many places to find jobs these days, and only so many citizens can be entrepreneurs working for themselves.
There is a long history in this nation of workers uniting to strike and do other actions to force employers to treat them better. Seeking higher minimum wages is one alternative to make improvements.
It would be nice to have s lot of alternatives when looking for jobs, but that's not today's reality.
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