On Tuesday, the Massachusetts Senate will take up a bill to raise the minimum wage to $11 an hour by 2016 and have it indexed to reflect increases in the cost of living
What’s pragmatically changed over the last four years?
What’s improved?
I spent nearly three years just smoking weed and trying to escape all this nonsense—America; the hypocrisy—but, I wasn’t able to get out.
I wasn’t able to break free.
I suppose I can slide some photos in here soon, but there’s no end to that. Body cam footage changes nothing (pragmatically) and protest photos have become photo shoots and terror-porn.
How many bodies have to stack up under the boot heel of this star-spangled machine?
How long will fools love their foolishness and loathe wisdom?
Is nobody else just flat-out o v e r this nonsense?
How much longer will cowards insist on pouring blood into a bottomless bucket?
-The Imperial-Corporatist government of the United States will continue its unchecked reign of terror and tumult throughout the Middle East
-Unarmed black people will continue to be slaughtered by state terrorists without any legal recourse
-American women will continue to be arrested for simply attempting to exercise the same rights as American men
-The rich will continue to amass their billions in blood money, and the poor will continue to adjust their sense of “normality” to new lows and blame themselves for their disparity
-People will experience a galvanizing moment of tragedy–one that could unite all peoples against their worldwide oppressors–but cowardice and wage slave mentality will cause them to abandon the call for direct action and call for “hopes and prayers” instead
-Things will continue to get worse
-People will continue to look forward to 2017 (a NEW year), when things will somehow magically get better on their own
This isn’t because Burger King is nicer in Denmark. It’s the law, and the US is actually the only so-called “developed” country that doesn’t mandate jobs provide a minimum amount of paid vacation, sick leave, or both.
kinda debunks that claim that they can’t afford to pay their workers those sort of wages and still make a profit
Its corporate greed, plain and simple.
It is the same in Sweden. It is so funny every time an american company opens up offices here and then tries to do it the american way and all the unions go “I don’t think so”.
They refused to sign on to the union deals that govern such things as pay/pension and vacation in Sweden. Most of our rights are not mandated by law (we don’t have a minimum wage for example) but are made in voluntary agreements between the unions and the companies.
But they refused, saying that they had never negotiated with any unions anywhere else in the world and weren’t planning to do it in Sweden either.
Of course a lot of people thought it was useless fighting against an international giant, but Handels (the store worker’s union) said that they could not budge, because that might mean that the whole Swedish model might crumble. So they went on strike in the three stores that the company had opened so far.
Cue a shitstorm from the press, and from right wing politicians. But the members were all for it, and other unions started doing sympathy actions. The teamsters refused to deliver goods to their stores, the financial unions blockaded all economical transactions regarding Toys ‘r Us and the strike got strong international support as well, especially in the US.
In the end, Toys ‘r Us caved in, signed the union deal, and thus their employees got the same treatment as Swedish store workers everywhere.
The right to be treated as bloody human beings and not disposable cogs in a machine.
and that story right there? is exactly why Republicans in the US work so hard to bust unions. it’s because unionizing WORKS and they’re terrified of workers actually having some power.
so this is how people in all those european countries can afford to be going on trips and shit
Trump-supporters voted for a privileged elitist who cares for them as much as the rich folks in dystopian sci-fi care about the lower classes. Full-blown Soylent Greenshit.
Remember that the next time he - or one of his rich, fast food pals like Papa John - tell us that raising minimum wage would be “devastating to the American economy”.
“But like… that’s like so much more money than I make. Stop complaining.”
No.
I won’t stop complaining.
Just because your poverty wages are worse than my poverty wages doesn’t mean that I don’t have the right to be mad about my poverty wages. In many parts of the country you can’t even afford an apartment at $20/hr. Including where I live.
Not to mention the cost of medication for my disabled ass. Every wage looks a hell of a lot different if you have to spend hundreds to thousands a month on your life saving medication.
Minimum wage should be $30/hr. Period.
-fae
Minimum wage should scale with the cost of living for an area actually. In places where the cost of living is astronomical, even $30 an hour wouldn’t cut it. In San Francisco, a true living wage would be closer to $70 an hour. It would be a major incentive to regulate prices on damn near everything, but housing especially, because companies definitely don’t want to shell out that much in wages.
[ID: a tweet from @1anjohn that says: $15 an hour is poverty and I think we need to say that loudly because right now companies use it as a badge of honor]
Every time I get groceries I’m always appalled at how little you can get for like, $20. I was making banana pudding so I needed vanilla wafers but the brand name nilla wafers cost $4 a box. The minimum wage in my state is $7.25/hr. My friend put it really well when he said “imagine you work for an hour and someone hands you two boxes of nilla wafers and said ‘actually this is a bit more than what I owe you’”
How are some of y’all missing the point so bad. “Shop at aldi instead” “make your own food” “don’t buy brand name” “don’t buy unhealthy processed food” It’s not about the box of cookies. This is about how minimum wage pays peanuts and has stagnated for 12 years while the cost of living keeps growing. No one wants your financial advice about how to survive on beans and rice and frozen veggies. The smartest grocery list in the world is not gonna help you budget your way out of poverty. Please get a grip for the love of god
Without a planned economy, there is no way to ensure full employment.
Capitalism consistently operates under capacity. This means empty facilitates, full of productive machinery, while those who could operate it are unemployed.
That’s not an accident.
Competition for jobs drives wages down. If 1000 people are willing and able to fill one post, the employer can choose the cheapest from a large pool of workers, all undercutting the cost of each other’s labour to secure the job.
If there are only a handful of people to do a job, wages cannot be forced down as far.
Near-full employment would leave employers with a very small pool of potential workers, forcing wages to increase or stay the same.
The market drives unemployment, demanding the longest possible hours from the cheapest available labourers.
Capitalism is not freedom. Capital is a condition of freedom under capitalism.
What does that mean?
In order to have “freedom” of choice, you must have capital (wealth/property).
For example, those with capital can choose not to work.
Those without capital must find employment in order to buy food, clothes, shelter, etc. or to maintain acceptable living standards, although workers often live in poverty anyway. This means they have to sell their ability to work. The capitalist exploitsthe worker.
Employment does not provide workers with a wage that would allow them to accumulate enough capital to leave employment. This is a form of coercion, which holds the capitalist economy together.
In other words, the purpose of the wage is to ‘keep the labourer in bare existence as a labourer’.
Workers compete for jobs. Employers choose those who will accept the lowest wage.
As poorer nations entered the market, employers moved jobs en masse to those places. Workers do the same work on very low wages.
This created mass unemployment in the countries where capitalism began.
Without an income, individuals cannot buy what capitalists are selling. Workers in poor countries can’t afford the products of their labour - wages are too low.
Welfare programmes, although they were won by workers, create a consumer base in the countries left behind by industrial capitalists (they enable the unemployed to buy).
The market depends on the capitalist state. They appear antagonistic, but the capitalist state continually saves the market from extinction by its own hand (this is a ’bourgeois dictatorship’).
Maximisation of profit minimises disposable income. Therefore, a ‘free’ market is impossible, as is ‘anarcho-capitalism’ (also known as ‘right libertarianism’).
“But like… that’s like so much more money than I make. Stop complaining.”
No.
I won’t stop complaining.
Just because your poverty wages are worse than my poverty wages doesn’t mean that I don’t have the right to be mad about my poverty wages. In many parts of the country you can’t even afford an apartment at $20/hr. Including where I live.
Not to mention the cost of medication for my disabled ass. Every wage looks a hell of a lot different if you have to spend hundreds to thousands a month on your life saving medication.
Minimum wage should be $30/hr. Period.
-fae
Minimum wage should scale with the cost of living for an area actually. In places where the cost of living is astronomical, even $30 an hour wouldn’t cut it. In San Francisco, a true living wage would be closer to $70 an hour. It would be a major incentive to regulate prices on damn near everything, but housing especially, because companies definitely don’t want to shell out that much in wages.
[ID: a tweet from @1anjohn that says: $15 an hour is poverty and I think we need to say that loudly because right now companies use it as a badge of honor]
Wages in the US have become wildly, fantastically unshackled from the costs of doing business, and they’ve been that way for decades. We’ve been told our entire lives that the world is such a way, and that it’s the Natural Normal result of things working the way they Have to work.
It’s a lie. It’s been a lie the entire time. They just Started Lying one day and didn’t stop until everyone who knew better died, gave up, or got their voice drowned out in all the noise.
You can’t tell me a combo at any fast food restaurant hasn’t doubled in price since the 90’s. Guess how much minimum wage has increased….
1) if food prices go up if wages go up, complain about CEOs not taking the cut, not the workers who need the money to pay their rent
2) smash this idiot idea that it’s only high school kids working minimum wage jobs: who do you think is making you your Starbucks at 12 pm? The highschool kids are all in highschool, idiot. At my retail store where people make minimum wage, we have no staff under 25 years old right now, about half the staff have families, they are all making minimum wage.
3) these people are providing you goods and services that are important and you want. You want a burrito. You want a coffee. Why on earth should the people providing us essential services not make enough money to pay their rent and their bills? Explain to me why this group of people deserves to live in poverty?
4) these jobs are not “unskilled” as in they’re easy to do and any asshole could do them. They are working harder than any prick sitting in an office chair all day.
5) Canada has raised its minimum wage. My province has had a minimum wage of $15 per hour for four years. Burritos do not cost $30 here, no one has gone out of business because they can’t afford to pay their workers anymore. What HAS happened is that I can now afford to live with my kids in my own apparent and not have to share it with my sister and her kids, I can afford to actually buy things, I can afford to cook healthy food and replace my shoes when they fall apart. The extra money I am making goes straight back into the local economy. My health and the health of my kids will be better and we will cost our government less. Don’t be a fucking idiot.
Fuck every single asshole who ever shits on minimum wage workers, ESPECIALLY these days after the pandemic when we all screamed about wanting to go out and get a coffee during lockdown. Fuck every single one of you with a rusty rake.
Reblogging for rottenbrainstuff’s excellent response.
