An Open Letter to Texas Governor Greg Abbott, Scrooge of the Lone Star State

Are There No More Prisons…No Union Workhouses?

Governor Abbott,

I normally don’t write this type of letter; when I want to be ignored, I’ll just make a quick stop at the DMV. But your announcement yesterday that Texas will opt out of the additional $300/week Federal unemployment benefit on June 26 has forced my hand. After all, the Texas state motto is “Friendship,” and friends are supposed to look out for each other.

Your rationale for this move is that the additional unemployment benefit is keeping Texans from going back to work because they allegedly make more on unemployment. You are partly correct; using only the $300 Federal benefit, it comes out to $7.50/hour assuming a 40-hour work week, which is a massive $0.25/hour increase over Texas’ current minimum wage of $7.25/hour. I can see why such ridiculous generosity would give you pause.

But here is a question you may not have considered, given your busy schedule of suing the Biden administration every other day. Why is Texas’ minimum wage so low in the first place? That $7.25/hour comes to $1257/month. The median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in the Dallas area is $1198/month, so before taxes a single person working for minimum wage has $59 left for food, utilities, etc. That doesn’t count the quarter they have to pull out so they can flip a coin to see which bills get paid that month.

Maybe the problem is that these numbers are, paradoxically, too small for you to get your head around. Your government salary is $150,000/year, plus free housing. (You also get $14,000/month from your injury settlement 40 years ago, which you say goes toward ongoing medical costs; maybe it’s a good time to discuss health care reform). With numbers like that how can we expect you to grasp something as silly as a $3.00 gallon of milk becoming a luxury item. Yet, that is the hard reality the 1.3 million Texans you are cutting off are facing.

But wait a minute, you may say. There are thousands of construction jobs available that pay much more than minimum wage. True, there are. And they remain available because there are not enough skilled workers trained in things like carpentry, masonry, and plumbing to fill them. Why? Because 20 years ago the schools in Texas stopped teaching vocational education, wanting every kid sucked into the financial abyss that is higher education and the usurious loans that go with it. The only people qualified to do those jobs now are immigrants. Yes, I used the “I” word; I’ll give you a moment to recover.

Maybe in the end you’ll get lucky. Maybe those 1.3 million people will all be Democrats who weren’t going to vote for you anyway. Plus, you won in 2018 by 1.1 million votes, so you’ve got some cushion. But that was against Lupe Valdez; Matthew McConaughey might be a different story.

Alright, alright, alright,

Paul