Yes, in another one of their completely random and not at all planned in advance conversations Fox Host Steve Doocy found amazing total agreement with Fox Business Host [And Nominal "Black Guy"] Charles Payne on how the minimum wage workers who have begun to consider using civil disobedience to battle for a wage increase are somehow, in someway, denigrating and insulting the memory of the Civil Rights Movement because - well - they're admitting to being "deficient".
Yes, "What?" was one of the first words in my head too. Also - "the"- and - "Fukk!" - came soon after.
http://www.rawstory.com/...
Over the weekend, fast food workers in Illinois voted to use civil disobedience to fight for $15-an-hour pay, and for the right to unionize.
“To compare it to the Civil Rights Movement seems insulting,” Fox News host Steve Doocy opined on Monday.
“It really is insulting,” Fox Business host Charles Payne agreed. “It’s beyond the pale. Here’s one of those things that insults almost everybody. Obviously, it would insult anyone who was involved in the Civil Rights Movement, and also the workers.”
Yes,
obviously. How could we not see the obviousness-ish of it all? It's right
there, on your face. No, not the pimple. No, not the birthmark -
right there - between your eyes. See it?
Nope, me, neither...
They continued.. because exactly when do they not stop talking nonsense?
“Because essentially, I guess, what you are saying to these workers is, you were born this way, in a position where you can never better yourself, you can never get an education, you can never work on the side, you can never have the knowledge, you can never go out there and pool your money together and start a business,” Payne continued. “You are stuck in this because somehow you were born with deficiencies that you’ll only have a certain skill set, the minimum skill set.”
Oh, I
get it. No, wait, no I don't.
Basically he's saying that it's perfectly fine that these jobs just plain suck, because someday - somehow - you'll get a better job. One that just might suck a little bit less. You'll get an education [using what for money or credit?] You'll get some knowledge, because clearly you know nothing now. You'll pool the money you don't have, with the credit you can't get and you'll start a business - using the knowledge for business you gained from the school you couldn't afford, and, what....where was I again?
Sorry, I got lost in a sea of fantasy and delusion that has nothing to do with the lives that many people are actually living in the real world.
Here's a thing, people working in minimum wage jobs are demanding higher wages because as it stands now - many of them are on Public Assistance.
Two studies released today make some different calculations to determine the total cost to American taxpayers of a large, low-wage workforce. It comes to an average of $7 billion a year. That’s the amount of annual public assistance families of fast-food workers received between 2007 and 2011, according to a new report written by economist Sylvia Allegretto and others, sponsored by the University of California at Berkeley’s Labor Center and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and funded by Fast Food Forward, the group that helped organize the summer’s labor strikes. The authors used publicly available data.
The report calls out the fast-food industry for its low wages, citing a median salary of $8.69 an hour and a history of offering part-time work. That might have been fine when those behind the counter were mostly teenagers living at home. These days, though, 68 percent of fast-food workers are single or married adults who aren’t in school—and 26 percent are raising children.
Overall, 52 percent of families of fast-food workers are enrolled in one or more public assistance programs, compared with 25 percent of the workforce as a whole. Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program accounted for nearly $4 billion of the $7 billion figure. The Earned Income Tax Credit, food stamps, and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program accounted for the rest. ”Public benefits receipt is the rule, rather than the exception, for this workforce,” the authors write.
The fact of the matter is that it's not "insulting" to think that many people are finding these jobs are now caught in the proverbial "poverty trap" - but not because of "welfare", it's because they're getting
wage gouged at work. It's simply a
fact that the majority of them are not teenagers, but adults, many who have families whose other job options within the middle educated class have
dried up and been shipped overseas.
The reality here is that these $multi-billion multi-national corporations are taking advantage of state provided public assistance to keep their wages and benefits packages low in order to further line their own pockets and grow share holder benefits. The real beneficiary of all this welfare spending isn't the workers - it's these businesses bottom line.
However Y'see in the Foxiverse, we shouldn't be thinking about the minimum wage, we should all be thinking about the maximum wage.
We’re quibbling over things that’s really about creating divisiveness,” he insisted. “And by the way, it still would be the minimum wage, and I think people out there want to think about maximum."
“If this becomes a civil rights issue, and I can always go and demand more, — what we’re really talking about… there are people in this country who are trying to create a utopian welfare society,” he opined. “It’s very expensive, and they’ve got to attack corporate balance sheets to make it work.”
A Utopian Welfare Society.
And you get that "Welfare Society" - by paying people enough that they Don't Need Welfare Anymore? Who could possibly want that, people earning enough money to make it without help from the state, but dirty Free Market Hating Communists?
So much Derp, so little time.
On top of the fact that the those working minimum wage jobs are not anything like the Foxers would claim they are - there's also the fact that many families, since the beginning of the Great Bush Recession haven't been climbing upward the income ladder, they've been falling backwards down it.
Median household wealth has fallen by 43 percent from its pre-recession peak in 2007, according to a new study from the Russell Sage Foundation. It has fallen so far that the median household is worth less now than it was in 2003. But the wealthiest 10 percent of families haven’t faced that pain, and are worth far more on average than they were in 2003.
The net worth of the median household — the line where half the country is richer and half the country is poorer, giving an approximation of how the middle class lives — rose from nearly $88,000 in 2003 to just below $99,000 in 2007, before collapsing when the financial crisis and Great Recession gutted the economy. In 2013, the figure stood at $56,335.
How exactly has the Median household net worth fallen over $40,000? It's because college educated adults can't get the jobs that they were promised their education would bring them -
instead they working for minimum wage.
In conclusion I have just one more item, on that "Insulting to Civil Rights" point. As Foxers would have it, Civil Rights leaders should be incensed at the idea that some people need a special handout to get ahead. They should be insulted and outraged at the idea that they can't make it on their own without the "gift" of a pay raise that is appropriate for the work they do and the basic standard of living. They should... but they never, ever, have.
Case in point, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr on the Minimum Wage.
“We know of no more crucial civil rights issue facing Congress today than the need to increase the federal minimum wage and extend its coverage,” King said in a 1966 statement supporting minimum wage legislation. “A living wage should be the right of all working Americans, and this is what we wish to urge upon our Congressmen and Senators as they now prepare to deal with this legislation.”
in 1966 the Federal Minimum wage was $1.25 per hour. Eventually King's wish was accomplished and it was raised in 1968 to $1.60 per hour.
However...
The minimum wage of $1.60 an hour in 1968 would be $10.86 today when adjusted for inflation.
$1.60 in 1968 dollars happens to be
$3.61 per hour more than the current Federal Minimum Wage when adjusted for inflation. That's just a sample of how far behind we've all fallen today compared to Dr. King first began speaking out on this issue.
Vyan