The “Fight for 15” movement first emerged as just some noisy protests fueled by a Twitter hashtag. They had some early success strong-arming liberal politicians to cave to their demands, which did little more than hasten a rush to automation by McDonald’s.. Most accounts see the effort in Seattle as not really helping (there is a biased report saying that it’s a success, a report commissioned by the politicians behind the law).
Real-world concerns like math and economics rarely interfere with the concerns of leftist political movements, however. Now “Fight for 15” wants to increase its scope and try to knock off some Republican governors.
From Fox Business:
The national campaign to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour – the Fight for 15 – is hosting a strike over Labor Day weekend, as the movement shifts gears toward winning back Midwestern states from the GOP in upcoming elections.
“The number one job of politicians is to raise the standard of living for workers,” the Fight for 15’s strike invitation reads. “But in states across the country, Republican governors are doing the opposite – using their power to do everything they can to help corporations and billionaires at the expense of the rest of us … In 2018, the worst Republican governors – ones in battleground states – are ALL up for reelection. Let’s throw ‘em out.”
It may come as a surprise to many Americans that the “number one job of politicians is to raise the standard of living for workers,” but that kind of talk sounds good to the mob organizing types. “Workers” can practically be a commie dogwhistle in the hands of a left-wing organizer.
A lot of us think it is up to the individual to improve his or her standard of living. That’s not cold-hearted, it’s just more in line with what one will actually experience during the course of a career.
Democrats obviously need to reconnect with working Americans — 2016 made that abundantly clear. This is most certainly an attempt at that, but probably a bit limited in scope to make it a cure-all.
The disaffected American workers who flocked to the polls to vote for Donald Trump in 2016 weren’t 20-year-old fast food workers.
“Fight for 15” is one of those liberal feel-good ideas that in practice does very little to make anyone feel very good.
There are a number of stories still coming out of liberal havens that have forced higher minimum wages on businesses, and most of them aren’t good.
Fifteen dollars an hour for a job that doesn’t exist is zero dollars an hour, but that’s something entirely lost on the screaming hordes.
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