:: Podcast #72 Is UP! The Upcoming Minimum Wage Battle: How To Counter Right-Wing Propaganda

Podcast #72 Is UP! The Upcoming Minimum Wage Battle: How To Counter Right-Wing Propaganda

The Democrats have proclaimed that before 100 hours have gone by in the new Congress this January, they will, among other things, raise the Federal minimum wage.

The bill, which has been languishing for years in the right-wing controlled Congress, is called the Fair Minimum Wage Act. It provides for three hikes: from the present $5.15 to $5.85 sixty days after enactment; to $6.55 one year later, which would be in 2008; and then to $7.25 a year after that, in 2009.

A critical element of any progressive agenda, of any social justice agenda, is raising the federal minimum wage. No single action could lift more people out of poverty as quickly.

And it benefits more than just minimum wage workers. Because there is a rippling upward effect, it will also help those who earn above the minimum but are still in poverty.

The right will advance all sorts of phony arguments about why raising the minimum wage is a bad idea.

We'll examine three of the main ones.

First would be, that if you raise the minimum wage, it will result in fewer minimum wage jobs, that some of those now employed at the minimum wage will lose their jobs...

For more, listen to the podcast! (You'll hear clips of Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Teddy Roosevelt, and FDR)

For those who aren't familiar with podcasts, podcasts are a series of mp3 audio files that you download to your computer or portable music device (iPod or other) and then can listen to whenever you want.

You don't need an iPod to listen to podcasts.

Podcast software like iTunes will automatically check a podcast at intervals you specify, and download any new installments.

iTunes is free and very easy to use. http://www.apple.com/itunes/

In iTunes, if you want to subscribe to my podcast, just click on Advanced at the top right, then choose Subscribe to Podcast, and paste in the URL http://feeds.feedburner.com/blasttheright

That's the URL to use for other podcast-friendly software programs as well.

Alternatively, you can just manually download new episodes from my podcast home page as they become available. Here is a link to my podcast's home page: http://www.therationalradical.com/podcast.html

Enjoy!!

Jack Clark 10:07 PM [+]
Post #116616292892771516

Comments:

You dude, I love your site. I just got my iPod, and found your podcast in the iTunes store.

Your podcast about the minimum wage was excellent. Your right that the right wingers will try to fight this to the end, cause they just want to keep there share of the pie. I agree with you that we should raise the minimum wage, but the wage should be selected to achive income justice.

If you go to the census web site, you can see that in 2004 there were 113,146 million households and the mean (or average) income was $60,528. (Here's the site: http://pubdb3.census.gov/macro/032005/hhinc/new06_000.htm) Now we know that only the top five percent make more than this, which is why the mean is so high, since most normal people make around $18,000 a year. If you multiply the number of households by the average income, you get $6,848,501,088 million dollars, or let's say $6.8 trillion dollars. This is the pie. This is how much total income is available to be split among the rich and the poor. This is a huge pie, but the right wingers are getting way more than there fair share.

We need to split the pie differently. What I am proposing is setting the minimum wage so that it provides an annual income of $60,528. Assuming a 2000 work week (40 hrs x 50 weeks), the wage should be $30.26.

Now this sounds like a lot, but think of what it would accomplish. First it would give a living wage to everyone in the country, which would result in economic justice. But more importantly, since the total pie is only $6.8 trillion dollars, with the vast majority of workers making $60,528 a year, what would be left over for the rich right wingers? $60,528 a year. YES, because the average still has to come out to $60,528.

So not only do we get economic justice, we get it two ways, because the rich, especially the filthy rich will see their share of the income pie disappearing into the pockets of their former slaves, while all they can do is cry in their country clubs. There's only $6.8 trillion so split up, and guess who's getting it now!

And since four fifths of the country makes less than this already, they're sure to vote for it. It gives progressives the numbers they need to totally take over from the rich.

posted by Radboy 5:12 AM [+]

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