Assuming the Democrats get their way, and that’s highly unlikely, their proposal for the minimum wage isn’t really for $15 an hour. It’s for $15 an hour eventually, four years or five years from now. And the Democrats seem to be about to give that up as it is. When it comes to not doing anything for the working class, there’s lots of bipartisanship.
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Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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Two things come to mind. First, the minimum wage was last raised in 2009 (to $7.25). The current plan — we’ll agree to call it that — is to raise it to $15 by 2025. Sixteen years without a raise. Funny how all the places that pay these kind of wages make profits. Of course, by 2025, that $15 will be worth, what, $12/$13 an hour?
Second, I notice that much of the talk about this focuses on identity politics. “This will mainly help lift black women out of poverty.” I call bullshit so loudly that I think I just blew out a vocal cord. Being $10 a week above poverty is still poverty. Don’t act like this means these women are going to having better lives; it’s just going to be a tiny little bit less awful.
This is a class-based system of brutalization. The politicians on both sides use race and gender because it means people will vote for them (for different reasons).
$15 an hour? Wow. As Catherine Martin mutters while she’s in the pit in “Silence of the Lambs,” “Thanks for the scraps, asshole.”