Raise The Wage

Everyone knows American corporations from McDonalds to Walmart pay starvation wages. So now so-called leaders like Montana governor Greg “Punch a Journalist” Gianforte won’t distribute federal benefits, because people live better on those than on wages. Well, raise the wretched wages. They’re pitifully low. Or, as senator Bernie Sanders’ staff director Warren Gunnels put it: “Raise your wages and benefits or flip your own damn burgers and sweep your own damn floors.”


Just think, we live in a country where $300 per week is beyond the average American worker’s wildest dreams. What were they earning before? $200? $100? With pay like that, the U.S. really is what used to be called a Third World nation, and it’s organizations like the Chamber of Commerce that want to keep it that way. Back in early May, the Chamber, you may recall, blamed April’s lackluster employment expansion on the $300 weekly jobless benefit, “and began urging lawmakers to eliminate the federally enhanced unemployment payments,” as Truthout reported.

This is called class war. It is a rare instance, in that class war, of the more powerful side revealing its hand. Because mostly it doesn’t need to. Mostly GOP governors serve as commandos in the class war against working people so brazenly that corporations and the Chamber don’t need to show their faces. But things aren’t happening fast enough for the moneyed class. So now, at least 22 Republican governors have sprung into action, brandishing executive orders at reluctant workers, orders which slash the unemployment benefits of over 1.9 million people come June, according to the Washington Post.