Something for Nothing

I just heard that the national minimum wage was just increased last week from $5.15 to $5.85.

Who knew there were fucking hippies in Congress? Couldn’t they have gotten real jobs like all the other hippies of ages past and become lawyers instead? Who else would pass such legislation?

Now a worker making minimum wage will be making upwards of $28 more a week for the exact same amount of work they had been paid to do before. (Or, if they really catch on, they might see that they can work five hours less a week and still make the same amount of money, but who thinks like that?).

This new increase in money will put a full-time minimum wage worker even more comfortably over the poverty level (currently seemed to be $9800 for one person). Whereas he previously would have been $912 above the threshold, he would now be a much more comfortable $2,368 above it. And now even a parent supporting a family of four (whose poverty level is deemed to be an even $20,000) making minimum wage no longer would have to work 3,883 hours over the course of a year just to reach their poverty level, but instead only 3,417 hours. That’s 466 hours—more than an hour a day!—just handed over to these workers for nothing.

Obviously this is beneficial for the workers. But what about a hypothetical company? Let’s say a mere multi-million dollar company (they can’t all be billion dollar companies) had 1,000 employees working for minimum wage for forty hours a week over the course of a 52 week work year (I’m assuming they don’t get any vacation). Suddenly this company has to pay each of those 1,000 workers those $28 whole dollars more a week over the course of 52 weeks for doing the exact same amount of work! That’s $1,456 more per employee, coming out to $1,456,000 straight out of the company’s profits. Just like that. Gone.

That’s not the worst of it either. You know who really suffers here? The stockholders. Suddenly not only are workers working the same amount for more money, but now stockholders’ money is working even less for them than it was before.

One person gets something for nothing and now others are getting a little less for nothing? Seems a bit disproportionate. I’m beginning to see just how unfair Capitalism can be.

It also makes me wish I had a minimum wage paying job. It seems like they're getting quite a sweet deal these days.