It's Not About "Burger Flippers" It's About The Devalued Dollar

I'm sure many of you have seen the memes (or variations thereof) shown below on social media over the past few months. The one on the top is more than a bit disingenuous because it presupposes that first responders only get minimum wage and that they do not complain. There's a similar one comparing "burger flippers" with United States soldiers which is also disingenuous because it ignores the fact that soldiers are grossly under paid and under benefited as well! The bottom meme is closer to what has actually happened - the decline of buying power by the U.S. dollar and the MSM ignoring inflation, the second great depression and the impact that this had on tens of millions of Americans.

 

 

 

 

Many moons ago when I was working a part-time minimum wage job for $3.10 an hour while in college I was able to afford to share a 2 bedroom apartment, had a savings account and didn't need food stamps. Six months later, I was out of college and bumped up the gravy train to $3.50 an hour and more than 30 hours a week. Then I was paying back my student loan and still had the savings account, paid rent, paid for my food, paid for clothes, et al. My point is that the buying power of the dollar has dramatically decreased over the years and inflation (which they used to report on the nightly news by the way) is going through the roof.

 

I noticed that almost no one was bitching and moaning when McDonald's CEO was given a 4+ times raise last year, but raise the minimum wage and howls are made mostly from the right-wing, economists and filthy rich people. So, with minimum wage workers on food stamps, child welfare, housing welfare etc., you'd rather argue that subsidizing these high-profit, low wage corporations is all right for American taxpayers? A $15 an hour wage would cut food stamps rolls and all the rest. It's that simple. This isn't about pimply faced teenagers or retirees, this is about corporate welfare at the expense of working Americans and the fact that the dollar doesn't buy nearly as much as it use to.

 

If you are still fixated on the "burger flipper" in spite of reading this far, consider this: the average fast food "value meal" costs about $7.50. It would take an employee at said fast food establishment one hour's worth of wages to afford that. Even the self-serving, bigoted car magnate Henry Ford understood he had to pay his employees enough of a wage to afford the cars they built.

 

The Pesky Bill Of Rights

Back in the day, people in government compromised. The new Constitution of the United States of America, featuring more power for a central government, only came to pass because of the compromise to include the Bill Of Rights. These Rights are laid out in a specific order and there are ten of them. Let's look, shall we?

(The pesky Bill Of Rights.)

The 1st Amendment is all about freedom of and from religion, freedom of speech and assembly and that good ol' right of the people to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Pretty astounding when you think about it. But, rather pointless without the 2nd Amendment, which, without coincidence is second. You can't write something like the 1st Amendment, with it's pesky rights, and they are our rights, without a way to defend those rights. And by golly, the 2nd Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms and defend that precious 1st Amendment. Yep. Damn pesky. For one cannot exist without the other, and those folks in government who are really, really tired of people having ANY RIGHTS are presented here with a part of a document that is not only pesky, but damn irratating for them as well. Not only that, the intertwining of these two Amendments, is pesky and irritating for people who believe they have a left wing or right wing view of the whole thing.

But, wait!!! There's more!

It's the 3rd Amendment! A close examination of this Amendment by the jaded, terrorist fearing crowd of the 21st century, reveals cries of antiquation! Oh, come on, really? Troops being quartered in my house? What is this, the 18th century? Regardless of all the misery and death that the military/industrial complex heaps upon the people on a daily basis, the heart of this amendment has had a lasting effect. Even today, in the 21st century, you'd be hard pressed to find some CIA backed dictator in Africa infringing on this, uh, American Right.

Which leads us then to the important, "I've been arrested for something and I can't get up" Amendments. The 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th Amendments all deal with the fact that the rights of the accused supersede those of the accuser. In other words, America believes in an axiom that was expressed, ironically if you prefer, by English jurist William Blackstone in 1765, "Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer".

And, now we fall upon the 9th and the 10th Amendments, which not only strengthen support of the "you can't have have the 1st which is defended by the 2nd, which also defends the 3rd Amendments" but also uses language so simple that one may be shocked to learn over 200 years later that the words were written by lawyers! And we all know how pesky lawyers can be.