The minimum wage here in the United States is so low that a new report from the national
low income housing coalition, it's actually their annual out of reach report, says that a full-time
minimum wage earner here in the United States would not be able to afford a one bedroom dwelling
in 93% of the counties in this country,
93% of the country off limits to a full-time minimum wage earner. You could not afford rent
in 93% of the country. This is shocking, this is startling, but
this is what happens when you have an economy that is not built for American workers. The
minimum wage has been stagnant for over a decade. We have had multiple opportunities just this year
to raise it, but all the Republicans and a handful of Democrats, Manchin, Sinema, the usual suspects,
have thwarted those plans. They don't like the idea of a $15 minimum wage. They don't
care enough about the fact that a full-time worker here in the United States working 40 hours a week,
can't afford a home, can't afford an apartment. They don't care
because that's the way the US economy is designed. That's the way our capitalistic system works. It
only works for those that are already doing well. If you're at the bottom, it is near impossible,
again, because of the way this thing is designed, for you to pull yourself out of this.
It's designed to create poverty and to keep people in poverty.
It is systemic poverty, and that has to change because if it doesn't, we're never going to have
a real economy here in the United States. And we're certainly never going to have a strong
economy here in the United States. It's always looked good on paper for the most part,
except when we do have recessions or depressions, but you look at it on paper right now in this
so-called recovery. Hell it looks awesome, right? Stock market's kicking butt. You know,
we're creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs every month. Unemployment rate has been
falling steadily all year long. It looks awesome on paper until you actually start to read those
papers. And as I've repeatedly said here at Ring of Fire, I've read those jobs reports,
okay. I've downloaded the PDFs and actually read through them. It's tedious, boring, terrible work.
But I do encourage everyone to do that because when you see these reports that, oh, we created
200,000 jobs or 150,000 jobs or 300,000 jobs, go and look at what kind of jobs we're creating
because we're not creating real good middle-class middle income jobs here in the United States.
We're creating more and more minimum wage jobs. That again are designed to keep people
in poverty and a huge majority of minimum wage workers here in the United States are people
over the age of 24. We're not talking about a 16 year old person working at a McDonald's.
We're talking about somebody in their mid to late twenties, and this is all they're able to get.
And they can't even afford housing in 93% of the country. They deserve better.
During the pandemic, we were holding these people up as the beacons,
right? The exemplary American workers, the essential workers, we called them.
And now they're back to being lazy, greedy people who don't want to work for minimum wage.
They deserve better. They deserve more. They deserve $20 an hour or more, which is
actually what the minimum wage would be if it had kept pace with inflation,
even before the borderline hyperinflation that we're seeing right now,
it still would have been, I think, what is it like $23 and some change.
And that's what they should be making today. In areas across the country
where the minimum wage has been increased to at least $15 an hour, guess what's happened,
not rampant job loss, but economic expansion. Companies that are raising their minimum wages
to $15 an hour or more. They're not experiencing a crisis of, you know, losing money. They're
doing better than ever. And some of them are even getting thousands of applicants for those jobs.
Americans want to work. They just don't want to bust their for 40 hours a week
and still have to live on the streets. I say that it's not too much to ask of American workers. They
deserve more. And it's beyond time for both parties in Congress to get on this issue
and help fixing and rebuilding the US economy into one that works for everybody.