#15now

Lexington, Virginia: Say no to hate, yes to unity & solidarity! Hundreds take to the streets for  Lexington's first ever MLK Day Parade, January 14, 2017. 

aka Concern-Trolling the Resistance Part 1

credit: Ted Eytan

Public protests lead to all sorts of hand wringing and concern trolling. So I’m not surprised that there’s no shortage of that sort of thing with the widespread direct actions taking place against the Trump Administration.

There were a lot of silly takes about coups and hopeless activist naiveté when the travel ban went down. Take it away, noted activist/organizer Jake Fuentes:

…Stop believing that protests alone do much good. Protests [are] not sufficient. Not only are they relatively ineffective at changing policy, they’re also falsely cathartic to those protesting.

…Even if protestors [sic] gain mild, symbolic concessions, the fact that their anger has an outlet is useful to the other side.

Oh, wait. Jake Fuentes is a banking executive. No matter, I’m sure he’s been out in these streets for a long time. After all, his employer, Capital One, is a great corporate citizen that shows constant, touching concern for its customers.

Sarcasm aside, let’s assume that his Medium post blew up because of his clickbaity premise and this site’s curators, not his expertise. He is clearly new to this subject area, and does not know what he is talking about. After all, everything Fuentes says above is wrong.

Looking for light on the longest night

Photo by L.C. Notaasen, published under Creative Commons license

At this year’s winter solstice, the darkness seems worse, deeper, more threatening. The Seasonal Affective Disorder, in which lack of light brings on depression, can’t hold a candle to this year’s Systemic American Dysfunction.

Light marks solstice, from pagan fires on British hilltops to Scandinavian Yule logs to Hanukkah candles…

For many Americans the so-called, “American Dream,” is nothing more than a dream due to the financial limitations for many people in this country. How can people aspire to their dreams when they can barely make rent and consume three meals a day? When The Fight for $15 formed 4 years ago the group’s unifying message was clear, no one should work a full time job and worry about if they were going to be able to pay the rent that month, or feed themselves that day. The Fight For $15 movement is obviously a fight that’s goal is to increase the minimum wage for all who work full time jobs, but this wasn’t their only goal. As highlighted on the Fight for $15 website, “For too long, McDonald’s and low-wage employers have made billions of dollars in profit and pushed off costs onto taxpayers, while leaving people like us – the people who do the real work – to struggle to survive” (Fight for $15). The movement now has grown to over 300 cities, on six continents to spread the awareness about the wage and income inequalities, where companies are choosing to neglect their employees and concentrate the wealth to the top sectors of the company. With continuous efforts, the movement has made strides towards addressing the unfairness of the job market. While the movement has, and continues to experience, push back, its resiliency never wanes. Americans today have made strides from the protests against income inequality by seeing raises in the minimum wage in various states like California, New York, and cities such as Seattle, Portland, and Chicago. This is a great start for the movement; which in 2012, when it first began as a fast food workers’ strike, was barely taken seriously. The continuous efforts of those in the movement have now yielded raises for over 20 million Americans, but the fight cannot stop there, considering the continuous efforts by those who want to bring down the working class (Pac, 2016). When the minimum wage was first instituted in 1938, the pay was .25 cents an hour when Franklin Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. However since the Great Depression, the pay rate has only risen 22 times and unfortunately it has not risen at the same pace as inflation; making it more difficult for some people to afford the basic necessities for themselves or family members (Lester, 2014). These hardships only further motivate the Fight for 15 and justify the need to at least provide a living wage for all full time workers. As reported by the Economic Policy Institute in a 2015 study, even a $12 per hour federal minimum wage can help provide raises for over 35 million workers by 2020. This wage will be helpful for many Americans and is also economically sustainable with that $12 dollar an hour wage being implemented by 2020. “$12.00 in 2020 would equal a modest 10 percent increase from the federal minimum wage at its peak value in 1968…” (Economic Policy Institute, 2015). In 1968 the minimum wage was $1.60 per hour, equivalent to about $10.68 an hour in today’s economic climate, a far more reasonable wage to live off in most cities and equates to just over $22,000 per year. However the most recent proposal to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour, unfortunately came to no avail when Republican’s blocked the bill with their senate vote (Lowery, 2014). For some critics, they argue that raising the minimum wage would be bad for the economy in the long run, since it could lead to a loss of jobs for poorer families, rather than benefit them. Yet as highlighted on Journalist’s Resources, in most instances right-leaning groups will incorporate data that favors the corporations, whereas left leaning organizations use data that favors workers. However, in the end, nothing changes the fact that we have an overwhelming number of people living in poverty under the current minimum wage. The U.S. Census Bureau has shown that poverty levels have dropped in the past few years, but we still have over 43 million people living in poverty unfortunately (WorldHunger.org, 2016). At the current federal minimum wage, an employee working 40 hours a week would earn just over $15,000 per year, but in most cases this is not enough to live on, especially if you have other mouths to feed beside yourself (Boushey, 2014). (source: http://inequality.org/income-inequality/) This struggle can be noticed in cities like New York where the poverty rate, as of 2016, is at about 20 percent, but that poverty level is unfortunately not as low in neighborhoods like Bed-Stuy and East Harlem, that are not predominantly white. This poverty level is especially high for families with children who have only seen a two percent rise in their median incomes from 2014 to 2015 (Jokhakar, 2016). “Despite the slow improvement in the child poverty rate, over half a million New York City children are growing up poor, and a quarter of these children live in 8 of the city’s 59 community districts” (Jokhakar, 2016). A big part of this problem also stems from the rising rent in New York City, which obviously was not rising at a similar increment to societies household incomes. From 2000 to 2012, New York had seen its median rent price rise 75 percent in that 12-year span, this was 30 percent higher than the rest of the country, but the major problem comes from the five percent decrease of the median income in the city (Diehm & Mathias, 2014). As noted in 2012, those making between $20,000 and $40,000 a year were spending 44 percent of their income on rent, and according to federal guidelines those spending over 30 percent of their income on rent were considered to be cost-burdened. This would make it harder to afford the necessities like food, clothing, transportation, and medical attention (Diehm & Mathias, 2014). On November 29th 2016, protesters again gathered with the hope of continuing to raise awareness about the Fight for $15 movement. These gatherings were held in over 340 cities across the United States and gathered to voice that even the election of Donald Trump, would not halt the movement’s progress. This also comes even with recently designated Labor Secretary, fast food CEO, and Fight For 15 critic, Andy Puzder, who has been critical of a higher minimum wage of even nine dollars. Many argue that this appointment is a big slap to the face of the labor movement considering how last year the CEO made more money in one day ($17,192), than one of his full-time fast food employees at Carl’s Jr and Hardee’s makes in a year ($15,130) (Miller, 2016). This also isn’t the only example of where an executive in a position of power is making more money than their majority workforce, yet claims there isn’t enough money to give them a small raise. This can in some ways also be seen through the wide discrepancy between the medians of the top 20 percent of household incomes and the bottom 20, where the tops median income in NYC is over $420,000 a year, but the bottom 20 percent almost makes $10,000 a year, as seen in study done by the U.S. Census (Roberts, 2014). Yet the argument that some on the right have in regard to how raising minimum wage is a negative, can be set aside as a worthy reason with the success of Seattle’s current minimum wage, which is currently at about $11 an hour and set to reach $15 by 2017 for businesses with over 500 employees. But the important part of this development is not that people have made a few extra dollars, but rather that the effects of pay raises have not resulted in a loss of jobs as some may suggest.

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Incomes For The Wealthy Shoot Up

I would, for a moment, like to address something about the $15 minimum wage debate that hasn't been heard from in some bit.  One argument from opponents of the $15 that I've heard and seen repeatedly is some variant of the following "minimum wage jobs are meant to be starting jobs and you should move up."

For a bit of reference, the State of Illinois has its minimum wage at $8.25 per hour.  Working 40 hours a week for all 52 weeks of the year.  Before taxes, you will have earned $17,160.  Using a tax estimator (https://smartasset.com/taxes/illinois-tax-calculator#2oBCRCsZkP) and entering my city and state residence, the website estimates that the total income tax will be $2,557 leaving a person with $14,603 to live on.  Keep in mind that  the federal poverty line for an individual in 2015 is $11,880 (https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/federal-poverty-level-FPL/).  So this person has $14,603 to work with in Plainfield, Illinois to try and fund their life.  I will use Plainfield since that is what was entered into the tax calculator.  Plainfield, for those unaware, is a suburban municipality that has a population around 39,000.  So this person has $14,603 to pay for gas (if someone is making minimum wage and working 40 hours we can assume they are commuting), if this person is under 26 they can be lucky enough to still be on their parent's insurance but that is not necessarily guaranteed, but if they are older they must pay for their own, they have to pay food, garbage pick-up, gas, cable/internet, electric, water, rent, phone bill, credit card bill (as in the typical minimum payment.  In this modern world you may have heard "no credit is worse than bad credit."  So you need some form of credit payment in order to build credit for larger purchases), clothing/work clothes (if your job does not provide you work wear or require one specific product you cannot claim them on your taxes), hygiene products (if you are a female this will be drastically more than males), car insurance, and regular car care (oil changes. air filters, tune ups, tire rotations, and any other typical scheduled care).  This is all for a single person and given that you can shop around for different prices for a lot of the things that were listed but reasonably speaking rent would cost a couple hundred dollars at least and over the course of a year would be at least $3,000.  The other numbers would be complete conjecture but try and fathom actually living and $14,603

The situation gets worse if you consider a single child in the mix as well. Using the same sources as above, the poverty line for 2 people is $16,020 and the taxes change to an estimated $2,071 leaving you with an estimated $15,089.  Now, you need to adjust the costs of the bills in the previous paragraph to two people.  There are going to be additional ones with a child too.  If they're are school age, supplies and school cost (remember, you have to pay for public school in Illinois.  If you don't pay the school, at the very least they will not give a child their diploma), shots, and possible others that I cannot think of at the moment.  

Going back to the original point I was addressing that you are supposed go upwards from minimum wage/low paying jobs.  The Walmart corporation's minimum wage across all stores is $10 an hour or it will be very shortly, working 40 hours a week exactly (some businesses do not enjoy giving overtime so that will remain out) you will make an untaxed 20,800 a year.  One person without dependents will be estimated to taxed (using the same sources) $3,394 leaving a person with $17,406 (with one dependent it would be a taxed $2,850 leaving $17,950).  I would like to mention that store locations have many more part time employees than full time and even if you are a full time employee, it does not mean you will receive a great raise.  In fact, with the $10 minimum wage, they decided that there would be a flat yearly raise of 2% which is about 20 cents.  An employee with the company for 10 years could possible only be making slightly over $12 dollars.  Why am I spending so much text and time on Walmart?  Walmart is the largest single employer with the exception of the Government with a little over 2 million employees (The US has 324 million residents as of today according to http://www.census.gov/popclock/ ).  The food and beverage industry in general has 4.7 million employees in 2014 (http://www.bls.gov/ooh/food-preparation-and-serving/food-and-beverage-serving-and-related-workers.htm  ), retail sales workers has 4.8 million employees (http://www.bls.gov/ooh/sales/retail-sales-workers.htm), combined that is 9.5 million employees.  In 2015 there was an estimated 321,418,820 persons in the US (http://www.census.gov/search-results.html?q=percent+of+population+under+18&search.x=0&search.y=0&search=submit&page=1&stateGeo=none&searchtype=web) and there is an estimated 22.9% of the population is under 18 years of age (https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/AGE135215/00 ) leaving 77.1% that are above.  Doing quick math and multiplying 321,428,820 by 77.1% to find the estimated number of person 18 years old and older (because I could not find that number on the census bureau) and you get "247,813,910.22".  That is the amount of people in the US at working age guaranteed.  I realize that certain jobs and states allow for the hiring of individuals under 18 so recognize that as a point of some error in the numbers.

Food and retail are the two industries that came to mind the quickest that have a large amount of employees and lackluster pay rates but there are so many more that would end up turning this into a full essay for a class.  10 million positions is a lot.  When someone says that a person should try for higher things, that in of itself is not a wrong thing to say. Pushing oneself to greater heights is a great thing to do for bother personal and monetary improvement. However, With 10 million positions at low wages just on what was discussed here, where are they to go?  At walmart, an in department raise for a year of employment will be a net of 20 cents which changes $20,800 to $21,216 (using 10.20 * 40 * 52), That is not much improvement.  And that raise is standard, there is not a choice for a manager to up that amount, it is a flat 2%.  In saying this, I do not mean to criticize Walmart in anyway, as mentioned before, they are the single largest employer and easiest to work with because they affect a large amount of people.  The persons that would make the most in a store with the exception of the managers are supervisors and there are a max of about 10 of them in a store, so that still leaves so many other people. And those lower positions, wherever they may be in whatever business they might be in, still have to be filled.  In order for someone to move up, there has to be vacancy to fill.  People naturally stay in higher positions longer because of the increased money and benefits and what have you, so vacancies are rare.  They can also be the first jobs to be cut or consolidated because of their expense to a corporation. Without a vacancy, there cannot be vertical movement.  There always has to be a fast food clerk.  There always has to be a cart pusher.  There always has to be bagger or a cashier.  Those positions are necessarily going away.  They will be there and someone has to fill them.  And in order for someone to get out of that, they either have to move up (in the company or not) or move out into unemployment which is zero intake.