If a Living Wage Breaks the System, It Deserves to be Broken

The American system needs to work for its citizens again.

Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi have sued the Biden administration for his executive order raising the minimum wage for federal contractors to $15 an hour. This is par for the course for GOP-led free-dumb states as far as I’m concerned, but I absolutely love their reasoning for doing so.

The three states argue that raising the minimum wage that high will cause massive unemployment and inflation. This seems incredibly dumb to me — one of the reasons so many people are quitting and we have the “labor shortage” going on right now is that wages have been suppressed for almost 40 years now.

It seems to me that raising the minimum wage would encourage more people to stay at their jobs, but what do I know. Also, we are at the point where inflation is so high that the Fed is suggesting that they will raise rates half a point, which is a bunch of technical junk that belies the fact that it hasn’t been done in two decades. I don’t know that raising the minimum wage to keep up with inflation would do much more to contribute to forces that are already in motion.

However, and most importantly, the system doesn’t work for people like you and me, it works for the people in power who have a lot of pressure to stay in power and keep us from climbing the ladder. As I have written, the system is not broken but is, in fact, working as intended for those people in power, and I suspect that they are worried that a higher minimum wage will have a snowball effect.

Who knows? Maybe once workers have higher wages they might start demanding things like sick days or vacation time or — gasp! — universal healthcare! Once they have a little taste of the good life, they’ll start demanding these things that are untenable for corporate profits! How will Fortune 500 companies pay for their stock buybacks now?

All of this sarcasm is to say that the system doesn’t work for the people making $15 an hour, and if $15 an hour breaks that system, it deserves — no, needs — to be broken. The unfettered capitalistic nonsense that has been dominating America since the 80s has caused far too much damage to the middle class, the lower class, and pretty much anyone who isn’t already fairly wealthy. We need to rein it in a bit.

I think that once we start offering better wages and benefits, the so-called “labor shortage” will magically resolve itself. Many companies are already discovering this — I have seen quite a few examples of companies that pay their workers decent wages and don’t seem to have issues with finding workers. These aren’t even professional companies — I’m talking about local burger joints who pay their workers $15-$18 starting wages and still manage to sell burgers for a few bucks.

A lot of naysayers will argue that all of this economic upheaval will cause widespread unemployment and crash the stock market and all manner of other doom and gloom. Well, I hate to say it, but that’s happened three times since 2000, and all of us middle-class and below folks still managed because that’s what we’ve been doing for decades now.

If we have to struggle through two or three years of recession and depression to get better wages and working conditions, so be it. We have been struggling and coping with crummy wages, expensive healthcare, and student debt for so long that living with it for another few years won’t be any different than typical.

Pay us more, give us better healthcare, give us legally-guaranteed vacation and sick time, and treat us like human beings instead of disposable cattle. I’m fairly certain that if our corporate overlords did that, they’d find that we are more than happy to do a lot of the jobs that are facing massive shortages right now and the “labor shortage” will stop being a thing.

Doing that, though, would give up some small amount of power that they have, and once they give an inch, they’re worried that we’ll come for our mile, and “eat the rich” is an awfully common refrain these days. They’re more invested in maintaining the system that works for them, though, which is why they fight tooth and nail to keep it in place.

In response to that mindset, I return to the Twisted Sister refrain that I have quoted several times in the past and quote once again:

We’re not going to take it anymore.

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