Scenes from the Class War (12.23)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jDBzUTDUBI

“I’m tired of working for $7.25.”

“Wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner. If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accept harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford him no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice.”

“President Barack Obama is throwing his support behind congressional Democrats’ proposal to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 and peg it to inflation, more than a dollar higher than the $9 proposal he made in his State of the Union address in February.”

“I would vote to repeal the minimum wage.”

“Cutting unemployment insurance apparently hasn’t encouraged the unemployed to look harder for work: It has caused them to drop out of the labor force altogether.”

“While workers generally used to be employed directly by companies, they’re increasingly kept separated through arrangements with technically independent contractors, whose workers can be paid far less.”

“Shunting its workers off to temp agencies is just one of the many ways Wal-Mart diminishes what it sees as the risk of unionization.”

“Annual cost of public assistance to families of fast-food workers: nearly $7 billion”

“People who are poor do not deserve to have children.”

“Leeches and parasites are to be destroyed; this is pest control; human leeches and parasites are to be eliminated with even greater expediency.”

“The other thing to consider is that it’s the poorest people who make up those 4.8 million who are missing out.”

“I’m concerned about the fact there seems to be a war on the poor. … That if you’re poor, somehow you’re shiftless and lazy.”

“It falls to us to tell them that they will die of diseases that are, in fact, treatable.”

“It’s like kicking a beggar and stealing his coat just because you know the cops will never do anything about it.”

“No, he’s not selling off the Vatican art collection — yet — but he’s calling for fundamental change in the way we think about money and our obligations to other human beings.”