Morality, Anyone?

Most of us like to think we are moral. So, when did our nation become dominated by people who place their own luxury above another person's survival?

The brief "minimum wage" message below was written by a fellow named Earl Dibbles Jr. It has been posted on tens of thousands of Facebook pages. My comments follow. Please share your opinion.

 

Don’t like the minimum wage?

If you’ve got minimum skills, minimum education, show minimum motivation, and provide a minimum contribution to the workplace, why the hell should someone be forced to pay you more?

 

Well, think about it.

Is that the kind of person you see when you are served by a waiter or waitress, buy a burger at McDonalds or a garden tool at Walmart? Those Walmart workers, paid an average of about $19,000 a year, contributed enough to the workplace that profits from their labors have provided six Walmart owner families with as much wealth as the total combined wealth of the poorest one-third of Americans. But they earn so little that we taxpayers keep them out of abject poverty by providing $400,000 a year worth of Medicaid, food stamps, earned income credits, and other services for those workers at every average Walmart store.

And six Walmart families--four of whom are among the 10 richest in the nation-- get the extra profits from the help that taxpayers give to their employees.

 Minimum education?

 If those minimum wage workers have minimum education, is that because they are lazy? Or is it because they are born with below average IQ, which is one half the people in the nation? Or because they were born to a single low-income parent in a ghetto where they face danger of getting shot or robbed or beaten on the way to school? Or because they have poorly motivated teachers with too few supplies in a school house that is falling apart? (See a recent New Yorker article on the Newark schools.)

 One More Thing.

Census Bureau records show there is a single Wall Street hedge fund manager who makes $1.4 million an hour. This is as much as 85,000 school teachers combined. What does he do? He moves money around for the very wealthy people. And he gets paid even if his investors lose money through his efforts. He pays only 15% tax because his lobbyists got him (and other hedge fund managers) a special provision in the tax law.

Who contributes more to society, the hedge fund manager or the school teacher? How about 85,000 school teachers?

Those are my opinions. What are yours?