Minimum Wage Movement

I think that a lot people are sympathetic to increasing the minimum wage but I think that the movement will flame out without accomplishing anything.  It is a lot like the occupy movement or the 99%; a lot of people identify with the goals and are in those respective groups figuratively speaking but the majority politicians and the mainstream media will not take up the cause.  This would create popular sustaining support and that is lacking.  You have billions being spent to convince would be members of these groups to act against their own best interests.  What we should look at is how many of these low wage workers are voting for Republicans.  It has to be a lot because the Republicans keep getting elected and they are not going to raise the minimum wage.  The silver lining might be that some editorial writers and cartoonists have seized on the fact that many of these workers get food stamps, housing assistance, and medical care covered by all taxpayers and that this amounts to a business subsidy.  I think that this tact could be successful because people are tired of give aways to business in exchange for jobs that never seem to materialize in the numbers or wages that the companies said they would.  So her's to hope that something will move because right now the majority in this country is being crushed by low wages, rising costs and a growing income disparity.

The 99%

I was reading the paper today and they ran a guest column by an economist who argues that Americans are rich when compared to the rest of the world even when the standard of living is taken into account. This is the conservatives argument about how we should be thankful. Basically what they are advocating is a race to the bottom for everyone except the top 1%. This is just the wrong way to look at things. You can't compare the US to Sudan, we should be making comparisons to Denmark or Germany. If you do want to compare to the third world we are rapidly heading there in terms of income disparity, personal mobility, lack of health care, wage depression,... Sure we make more money but many are earning less and less and the cost to maintain the current standard of living is not going down with income. If we are going to make a correction everything should come down in cost with wages. This is not going to happen, most business leaders don't see that less money equals less sales. But, this what is happening, that is why the economy is tanking. More and more people can't afford to buy. We need to change the argument from how well off we are compared to the rest of the world to well off the previous generation of Americans were when compared to the current generation.