There’s no other word for it. It’s disgusting --the rancid logic of “job creation” that prides itself in getting desperate people to work for low wages they cannot live on, forcing them to often hold down two slave-wage jobs just to make ends meet. It’s class warfare at its worst – the moneyed against the working poor.
Such logic has created a New Mexico economy where thousands and thousands of honest, hard working people struggle to survive, neither earning enough money to get ahead, nor to help New Mexico’s down-at-the-heel economic recovery, one of the worst in the nation.
When Governor Susanna Martinez vetoed the minimum wage hike of a dollar-an-hour to $8.50 last week, she also vetoed the hopes of 41.2 percent of New Mexicans who are living in what the American Community Survey of 2010 calls “low-income working families.” That’s 41.2 %! What is the governor thinking? She’s
burying nearly half the population of the state deeper and deeper into debt and despair.
It is shameful.
She, and her party handlers at big conservative think tanks around the country, have no empathy for people who work for minimum wage as self-supporting adults. They’re not seen as people, but as drags on profit margin. The political philosophy of the governor is based on the cruelty of zero sum sharks.
In her veto message she said a wage hike would “kill New Mexico jobs.” The $7.50 existing minimum wage is already killing New Mexico families, particularly single parent families. In these terrible economic times, it takes true heroism just to survive. And there are a lot of heroes in our state who are breaking their backs for almost nothing.
Imagine the impossible effort you’d have to expend if you were one of 45.8 % of New Mexicans whose income was so low that a third of what they made had to go for housing. That’s one third or more!
What’s even more disgusting is the arguments that the poor are poor because they are lazy or dumb. In New Mexico 71.3 percent of low income families work. (Low income is defined by the American Community Survey as below 200% of poverty.) And very few of us have the stomach or the evil genius for “smartest guy in the room” schemes to sucker investors and run to the Caribbean when the schemes go under.
There’s no escape from poverty when you’re working your fingers to the bone. And heaven help you if you or your family gets ill. Fifty percent of low income working families in New Mexico have parents with no health insurance!
Insisting on a living wage for 40 hours of work a week is not some dire conspiracy to “redistribute” wealth, to destroy capitalism, or crush entrepreneurs. It’s basic decency.
This is not to say that $8.50 an hour is going to solve anyone’s financial problems completely. But one dollar more an hour equals $2,080 more a year at forty hours a week with no time off, and that could mean more food, medicine, or even learning opportunities for cash-strapped families.
The rich and well-off (and I include “corporate persons” here) often whine that they need incentives to make more money, like tax breaks and a myriad of other subsidies. Where’s the incentive in toiling virtually night and day to make $7.50 an hour?
“Necessity” is the incentive of the poor and “filthy lucre” is the incentive of the rich.
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