President Obama wants close the gap between the rich and poor, but wage slaves must be aware of the consequences of the slow walk in higher wages. If the wages stop increasing before $15 to $16 an hour all it will accomplish is that wage slaves will be making just enough money to disqualify them and their families from food stamps or other government assistance, which ends up being no help at all. It will only help the government and make the anti-worker GOP happy.
The GOP will have you believe that low wage workers are lazy and do not want anything more out of life. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have poor because we have politicians who make bad decisions impacting the poor even more, such as daycare, Head Start or after school programs. Many head of households are single parents, most often women, and can’t afford the basic needs let alone daycare, so how are they supposed to get ahead if they can’t even make it to the starting line?
What the workers must have is wages that at least will make up for the loss of government support and enough disposal income to jump start the economy, remember $10 to $12 an hour will not do it. In fact, it could do the wage slaves more harm in the long run. To earn a few dollars more would feel good for a little while, but when reality hits, like the loss of food stamps, cost of health care and so on.
The best wage increase for workers is $15 to $16 an hour. To get here workers should join up with a band of brothers and sisters or starts an association or union to protect their interests.
Power of the workers is a real power, if used smartly.
To change the abundance of labor in the world is to put more money in the pockets of the laborer to buy the products their fellow workers are making. Otherwise, when there are more products than money, there is slump in the economy. Austerity policies, low wages and automation (robots) were also of concern in the 1950s when Henry Ford II, CEO of Ford, took Walter Reuther, head of the United Auto Workers Union, on a tour of a new engine plant.
Ford gestured to a fleet of new machines and said, “Walter, how are you going to get these robots to pay union dues?” The union leader turned to Ford and said, “Henry, how are you going to get robots to buy your cars?”
This type of change in the labor has created a new type of working class that swings from task to task in order to make ends meet while enduring the loss of labor rights and bargaining rights. They are called “precariat” workers, a group of workers who live on the verge of collapse due to the instability of the nature of their job…