{"id":299,"date":"2014-09-02T08:37:00","date_gmt":"2014-09-02T14:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/09\/is-the-15-minimum-wage-just-for-fast-food-workers.html"},"modified":"2015-03-01T22:23:56","modified_gmt":"2015-03-02T04:23:56","slug":"is-the-15-minimum-wage-just-for-fast-food-workers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/09\/is-the-15-minimum-wage-just-for-fast-food-workers.html","title":{"rendered":"Is the $15 minimum wage just for fast food workers?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Let\u2019s start with the fact that I find the idea of a $15 minimum wage preposterous, but \u201ca $15 minimum wage is preposterous\u201d doesn\u2019t make for a very interesting blog post.<\/p>\n

When all these protests first started making the news, I observed<\/a> that it was peculiar that the fight was centered on fast food workers, or even was limited to fast food and retail workers, and, if it\u2019s all about the hardships that families face when the breadwinner earns less than $15 an hour, those hardships aren\u2019t any different if you\u2019re a forklift operator or a barber at SuperCuts or any number of jobs that pay less than this rate.<\/p>\n

But I had kind of concluded that, as far as fast food goes, the attitude of the protest organizers was that \u201cfast food\u201d produces the most unsympathetic foe, since McDonald\u2019s is a favorite villain when it comes to childhood obesity, homogenization of culture, farming sustainability, and any number of favorite liberal causes.\u00a0 (Never mind that there are plenty of non-chain fast food places who would be more handicapped by a higher minimum wage law, with fewer resources to spend investing on labor-saving devices.)\u00a0 If a higher minimum wage law means that McDonald\u2019s raises its prices and fewer people eat there, then I suspect that to these activists, that\u2019s a feature, not a bug.\u00a0 (And if people lose jobs as a result, that\u2019s easily solved with more generous unemployment\/welfare benefits and\/or a minimum income, so nothing that should stand in the way of this project.)<\/p>\n

But perhaps I was mistaken.\u00a0 The AP reports<\/a>, via Drudge, that the SEIU is expanding the fight to home health care workers. No, there\u2019s not any more detail than a single sentence:\u00a0 there are a new wave of protests planned, and \u201c home health care aides will join the actions in some locations.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

All rationales about how these are just big corporations that can afford to pay their workers more by cutting executive pay fly straight out the window when it comes to home health care aides. \u00a0 Home health care is generally paid for by individual families, isn\u2019t it?\u00a0 When Dad needs help getting washed up and dressed in the morning (*not my Dad \u2014 just generally speaking, mind you), or even needs someone to come for longer periods or even all day long, most of the time (right?) this is coming straight out of the family\u2019s pocket, to a home healthcare company or directly to the caregiver.\u00a0 And this isn\u2019t the sort of splurge for which you can simply say, \u201cwell, just cut down on your spending.\u201d\u00a0 Sure, I suppose the activists could make the same claim that if only the company pocketed a little less they could absorb the increase, but not with a straight face. <\/span><\/p>\n

To be sure, there\u2019s the segment of the market that\u2019s paid for by Medicaid, but the SEIU already has that covered via their union negotiations and political donations to keep the generous contracts coming \u2014 and even here, the objective is to fleece the taxpayers.<\/span>

<\/span>Which means that the only next step that makes any sense is for the SEIU to insist that the home health care needs of ordinary middle-class Americans, now raised to an even higher cost, be covered by, you guessed it, the government, in a quest to move this to yet another \u201cthird-party payer\u201d situation.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let\u2019s start with the fact that I find the idea of a $15 minimum wage preposterous, but \u201ca $15 minimum wage is preposterous\u201d doesn\u2019t make for a very interesting blog post. When all these protests first started making the news, I observed that it was peculiar that the fight was centered on fast food workers, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[48],"class_list":["post-299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-minimum-wage"],"yoast_head":"\nIs the $15 minimum wage just for fast food workers?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Let's start with the fact that I find the idea of a $15 minimum wage preposterous, but "a $15 minimum wage is preposterous" doesn't make for a very\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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