Good for Bill Maher, who during his "New Rules" segment this Friday, took the likes of Walmart and McDonalds to task for being too cheap to pay their workers a living wage, and dumping the cost of them doing business onto the taxpayers.
MAHER: Now, when it comes to raising the minimum wage, conservatives always say it's a non-starter because it cuts into profits. Well, yeah. Of course. Paying workers is one of those unfortunate expenses of running a business... you know, like taxes, or making a product.
If you want to get rich with a tax-free enterprise that sells nothing, start a church.
You might think that paying people enough to live is so self-evident that even crazy people could understand it, but you would be wrong.
Michele Bachmann is not only against raising the minimum wage, she's against having one at all. She once said "if we took away the minimum wage... we could virtually wipe out unemployment because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level."
Put that in your brain and smoke it. You could hire everyone if you didn't have to pay them. And naturally, Ted Cruz agrees.Ted Cruz thinks it's a good thing that when his Cuban father came to America he was paid $.50 an hour to work as a dishwasher, before becoming Charo.
When did the American dream become this pathway to indentured servitude? This economic death spiral where workers get paid next to nothing, so they can only afford to buy next to nothing, so businesses are forced to sell cheaper and cheaper shit?
Walmart employees can only afford to shop at Walmart. McDonalds workers can only afford to eat at McDonalds. And Hooters waitresses have to wear shirts they grew out of years ago.
Even if you're not moved by the "don't be such a heartless prick" argument, consider the fact that most fast food workers, whose average age by the way now is 29, we're not talking about kids, are on some form of public assistance. Which is not surprising. When even working people can't make enough to live, they take money from the government in the form of food stamps, school lunches, housing assistance, day care. This is the welfare that conservatives hate.
But they never stop to think, if we raised the minimum wage and forced McDonalds and Walmart to pay their employees enough to eat, we the taxpayers wouldn't have to pick up the slack.
This is the question the right has to answer. Do you want smaller government with less handouts, or do you want a low minimum wage? Because you cannot have both.
If Col. Sanders isn't going to pay the lady behind the counter enough to live on, then Uncle Sam has to, and I for one am getting a little tired of helping highly profitable companies pay their workers.
Amen to that brother.
