I’m sure that you have all heard the comments made by the big guns in the GOP about the proposed minimum wage increase. Bernie Sanders, among others, is pushing to increase the minimum hourly wage to $15 dollars across the nation.
The Republicans have had a lot to say about this idea. I bet you have heard all of those confident statements telling us that the United States can’t possibly afford to pay its workers that much money. The Republicans tell us that the very idea of people making $15 dollars an hour is heresy. The Campaign For America’s Future summarized the views of the GOP candidates back in July. Ted Cruz was very clear on his thoughts on the minimum wage. He said:
“I think the minimum wage consistently hurts the most vulnerable. Unemployment among the young will go up if the minimum wage goes up as President Obama says.”
Jeb Bush went one step further at the time, suggesting a complete elimination of the minimum wage. His opinion was that the free market would do a better job of helping low wage earners. And then there was Donald Trump. When asked by Fox Business News in November about his opinion on the minimum wage, Trump stated:
“Taxes too high, wages too high. We are not going to be able to compete against the world.”
They are firm, they are adamant, they are absolutely certain. If we raise the hourly pay of average American workers, we will immediately lose jobs, fall behind in trade and suffer all kinds of terrible economic catastrophes.
The GOP is not in favor of artificially inflating employee compensation! Absolutely not.
OK. Got it! Sorry, Americans, you just have to deal with low pay. It’s for your own good.
So. I have to ask myself: where is the Republican Party outrage over the compensation package offered to the CEO of Goldman Sachs?
Reuters reports that Goldman Sachs’ head honcho Lloyd Blankfein will be paid 22.6 million dollars for his work in the past ONE YEAR. Gulp. You read that right. The man will make just shy of 23 million dollars for putting in his 40 hours a week.
Of course, the Goldman Sachs folks will tell you with a straight face that this ungodly number represents a pay cut for poor Lloyd. In 2014, he made 24 million dollars.
One wonders how he will ever manage to make ends meet.
I haven’t actually sat down to do the math that would tell me just how much money Mr. Blankfein made per hour this past year. But I know that it’s a whole boatload more than the 15 dollars an hour that the Republican Party assures us will bankrupt the United States.
I don’t know. Call me crazy. But it seems to me that if one fat cat on Wall Street can make 23 million bucks a year, the people sweating it out on Main Street can be paid the princely sum of $15 dollars an hour without causing economic collapse.
Featured image by “Phat Wad” via Flickr. Available through a Creative Commons License 2.0.
