The Myth the Lie and the True Facts about Minimum Wage

Pastor Edd Starks III

• Editorial: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Año: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781646280643
• Categoría: Persönliche Entwicklung
• Categoría: Private Finanzen

The Myth, the Lie and the True Facts about Minimum Wage will help all Americans, from the president down, understand how the American dream of home ownership is slipping away for most Americans, why the market crash happened in 2008, why Americans are working full-time yet homeless, and how to fix it with a living minimum wage.

Book 1

Minimum wage started in 1938 at twenty-five cents an hour. That was a courtesy of the Dennis Prager Show, which was hosted by Larry Elder who spoke this truth.

I got a job with Pinkerton Security. I was paid a minimum wage of $2.00 an hour. I was told I could work as many hours as I wanted, because back then, there was no overtime pay. If I worked fifteen hours a day, I would have made $30.00, with no time-and-a-half pay after eight hours in that fifteen-hour work period; instead of $30.00, it would’ve been $45.00, with time-and-a-half pay.

From 1974–1980, minimum wage grew from $2.00 an hour to $4.50 an hour. Minimum wage would have continued to grow, setting a standard for what a living minimum wage should’ve become. It’s life—forward momentum—or its growth was killed, stopped, or brought to a standstill.

Now the big question is “Why or what lie was used to justify minimum wages’ bloody, savage death.”

In 1980 when Ronald Wilson Reagan became president—a man who spent most of his life earning much, much more than minimum wage chose this as one of his first actions as president—he froze, killed, murdered, and destroyed minimum wage. In that one act, President Reagan caused economic terrorism to begin on the poor, the teens, and the middle class, which continues to this day. Reagan claimed his reason for freezing minimum wage was to help the small businessmen or small businesses. But consider this, that terroristic economic war he waged on the poor, the teens, and the middle class is still being waged thirty-eight years later in America, with no true correction or retroaction remedy to come.

President Reagan said that small businesses were the heart of America. If minimum wages continued to rise, it would hurt small businesses, and they would have to lay off workers. Instead of being able to hire new employees, his formula helped and is helping Walmart and every other businesses, companies, and corporations of every size to prosper. This was all done under the guise of helping small businesses at the expense of the poor, the teens, and the middle class.

Reagan “lied” when he froze minimum wages. It didn’t just affect small businesses; it affected all businesses. It affected all businesses, or maybe he really was too ignorant to see the far-reaching, tragic economic outcome. Because when you are rich or well-to-do, it’s hard to see, to feel for, and to bring relief to the poor. From the Fortune 100, 200, 300, 400, and 500 companies; to the federal, state county, and city employers; to the banking industry; to the airline industry; to the hotel and motel industry; to the retail industry, nonunion and unionized entry levels; to the hospital industry; to the manufacturing industry; to the defense contractors; and to all other entry-level positions, including the fast-food and restaurant industries—a frozen minimum wage affects all businesses, but it is not in the same way as it did and does affect the poor and middle class in economic suffering while all businesses large and small prosper.

By freezing minimum wage, it became the gauge or a standard used to hire a new employee. It was no longer based on how much he or she knew, on how high their educational level was, or on how much of an asset he or she would be to the company. The employer could and did point out to new hires their contrasting viewpoints on the number of applicants applying for the same position, on high unemployment across the board, and on the difference between a dead minimum and the glaring amount that position was offering above the minimum wage. This was a standard practice during oral interviews, or it was hinted at the same way as it is today with minimum wage.

Let us say the new hire was an MBA (master of business administration) graduate, and minimum wage was frozen from 1980–1998, all American employers got to shortchange their employees for years because all employers benefited from a dead or frozen minimum wage.

For those eighteen years, that dead minimum wage or frozen minimum wage remained the gauge of financial advancement in the workplace. This means you are making this much above the minimum wage, starting out; and your wage increase puts you now even more above the minimum wage.

From the employer’s standpoint, his or her employees are to be grateful that their pay is nonminimum wage. I’ve never met anyone who is unappreciative for being employed and having a job or career, but I’ve known a lot of people—including myself—that does not like to be cheated, exploited, and taken advantage of by anybody.

The truth is America is still working its workers at below-minimum wages, and American workers would still be working at below minimum wages even at $15.00 an hour. The national minimum wage is established to create a national standard of wages per hour in America from state to state. But now on the federal level, there is no moral compassion, concern, and care for the American worker that cities in California and New York are trying or attempting to help the little people, labors, and common workers. What America has is confusion in the workplace and in wages paid out across America for the same work done. It will take the federal government to get some righteous courage, the president, the congress, and the senate—to get some righteous courage to correct, defrost, and revive the minimum wage, which has been severely mistreated along with the little people of America.

Ask yourself how did minimum wages grow or increase to $4.50 an hour from $2.00 an hour in just six years. Then ask yourself why has it remained dead for eighteen years, and now for the last nineteen years, it’s been on life support of economic futility. Not for the last thirty-nine years has this state of economically futile use and misuse of the minimum wage helps America at all, because America is the people.

Remember, two-word phrases come biannually or once a year in June. It is called wage-adjustment increase and in January it is called the cost-of-living increase. The question is: “Why would the federal government show a little kindness to the little, the poor, and the small Americans?” It is because the American government has set a minimum-wage standard in place for the greater America and the majority of small American people, who need the government to hand up and not to hand out.

When that simple code of moral decency was broken by President Reagan, eight years; and is continued through President Bush Sr., four years; President Clinton, eight years; President Bush Jr., eight years; President Obama, eight years; and in President Trump’s administration, on his first year with no mention of a true correction to the national minimum wage’s value to America, the state in revenue, and for America, the people who need a livable minimum wage.

For you, history buffs, I didn’t forget about the eleventh-hour Band-Aid applied by the Clinton administration and congress when he had two years left on his second term. The Band-Aid represented a feeble attempt to fix a dead, savagely broken minimum-wage system. It was killed by a Republican president and equally ignored by both Republican and Democratic presidents that followed.

Now to the poor, the working teens, the lower and middle class, and the recently unemployed, those two-word phrases—wage-adjustment and cost-of-living increases—was music to their ears. This music to their ears should not come as a surprise to anyone. The June wage-adjustment increase and the cost-of-living increase were raises to the poor folk or the poor people by annual-pay increases that kept poor folk or working poor just above the poverty line. Contrary to the rich and republican and democratic mind-set, a living minimum wage does not make the poor rich and the rich poor. A living minimum wage only affords the poor the opportunity to live a little better.

Cost-of-living and wage-adjustment increase mean mandatory wage increases twice a year: twenty-one cent and twenty-one cent as an average, totaling an additional forty-two cent a year. Wow. It is a whole forty-two cent more a year. I wonder, “Does that break the bank?” No, it does not because a smart and wise businessman or woman would do the math and adjust the cost of goods and services up front to offset labor costs and increases.

You see the minimum-wage freeze is to keep rich folk richer and poor folk poorer only. It isn’t driven by economic sympathy for small businesses. Sadly, the republican mind-set—from the beginning—is about business because one-third of the original Republican Party was the Wig Party, which were once in the slave-trade business, plantation ownership, and engageme...