Representative Billy Long (r) issued a statement in response to President Obama’s State of the Union address:

Long Statement on State of the Union

01/20/15

           WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Rep. Billy Long issued the following statement on the president’s State of the Union address:

           “The American people sent a strong message to Washington in November that they wanted change.  Since then President Obama by his actions and words has doubled down on the policies and proposals that the American people rejected.  The new majority in Congress wants to empower the American people as we work for an efficient, effective and accountable government.  Hard-working taxpayers want economic growth, security and opportunity that a healthy economy would provide.  The president should direct his efforts in those areas as opposed to constantly trying to divide us along class and income lines.”

“…The president should direct his efforts in those areas as opposed to constantly trying to divide us along class and income lines.”

I’ve got news for Representative Long (r), we’ve been there for a while:

December 5, 2013

U.S. income inequality, on rise for decades, is now highest since 1928

By Drew DeSilver

….More than half (61%) of Americans said the U.S. economic system favors the wealthy, while just 35% said it’s fair to most people, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in March. A similar share (66%) of Americans said the gap between rich and poor had increased in the past five years; nearly three-quarters of respondents said the rich-poor gap was either a “very big” (47%) or “moderately big” (27%) problem….

….And while 54% of low-income people and 49% of middle-income people called the rich-poor gap a “very big” problem, only 36% of high-income people did so. A third of the high-income group said the rich-poor gap was either a small problem (19%) or not a problem at all (14%)….

A smart investor might want to get into pitchfork and torch futures.

Thursday saw about 100 fast-food workers in the St. Louis region participating in the latest of a series of ongoing protests demanding a wage hike to $15.00 an hour (nationally, fast-food workers average wage is about $8.94 an hour):

…  workers and organizers say they can’t live on the minimum wage, pointing to the disparity between their wages and the salaries of the people who run the corporations for which they work.

“We’re the ones busting our backs. He’s the one getting into his pool,” said protester Andrew Jackson, who has worked at Taco Bell on Hampton Avenue for 15 years and has five daughters, one of whom works at a McDonald’s and was also at Thursday’s rally. “I don’t think it’s fair that I have to work two jobs. I want time to be home with my family, too.”

Based on the letters to the editor that were printed in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch after an earlier iteration of this protest, it seems that many still think that fast-food workers are minors living at home and working for pocket change. Or they’re low-skilled losers who need to take responsibility for themselves, work two jobs, go back to school, get a better job, etc. If the letter writers concede that nobody can live on the minimum wage, they still think that asking for what one characterized as the entry-level salary for a college graduate is just too presumptuous, never mind that there’s a big difference between a college graduate’s beginning salary, which usually quickly increases, and the near-static pay of a fast-food employee.

But did you notice that the worker quoted in the Post-Dispatch article cited above is an adult man who is attempting to support a family? Most fast-food workers aren’t carefree teenagers:

…  these jobs are no longer introductions to the world of work. The age of the average worker is 28, with 70 percent 20 years old or older, according to statistics compiled by AOL Jobs. One out of four has at least one child. A third has at least some college education. And, according to the National Employment Law Project, there is “limited occupational mobility,” so the positions don’t lead to higher paying positions let alone opportunities to own franchises.

Most of these people are working in the fast-food industry because that’s where the jobs are in today’s post-industrial economy. The days of good-paying manufacturing jobs seem to be long gone. And News Flash! Lots of fast-food workers do work two jobs – in order to survive. Nor is fast-food work easy. At it’s worst it can be a relentless, hot, dreary scramble to keep up the pace while keeping your cool as you deal with an often difficult, demanding clientele.

It isn’t as if the fast-food companies can’t afford to pay their workers a living wage either. Profits are soaring. For example:

… corporate fast-food giants are enjoying robust profits. McDonald’s raked in $5.5 billion in profits in 2012 – a 27 percent increase in profits over five years – while YUM! Brands posted $1.6 billion in profits last year.

So don’t let folks tell you that paying a decent raise will push the cost of fast food into the stratosphere. Just remember that you and I are already being hit up for that low-cost Big Mac that some of us would never purchase outright:

Wages are so low that many workers have to turn to public assistance for basic survival. Which means that taxpayers must subsidize the poverty wages that fast-food corporations pay their employees.

While we’re on the topic of compensation and value rendered, I ‘d like to draw your attention to a different but related matter. Thursday’s print edition of the Post-Dispatch reprinted* an article from the Kansas City Star about a recent analysis from the Institute for Policy Studies that concluded that:

A select group of the nation’s corporate chief executives has been paid far more than their performance warranted, according to a compensation analysis released Wednesday.

[…]

Nearly 40 percent of the men who appeared on lists ranking America’s 25 highest-paid corporate leaders between 1993 and 2012 have led companies bailed out by U.S. taxpayers, been fired for poor performance, or led companies charged with fraud-related activities.

The reason that I bring this up is that I want to know why folks think it’s presumptuous for those who do some of the hardest, dirtiest work in the country to ask for a living wage while white collar incompetents and crooks collect billions.

* I can only find this online reprint from the Wichita Eagle – but it’s the same article I’m looking at in my print paper.  

The Plum Line

Posted at 11:57 AM ET, 11/12/2011

Prediction

By Greg Sargent

The ultra wealthy will spend a whole lot of undisclosed money on a whole lot of ads filled with a whole lot of lies designed to dupe a whole lot of struggling Americans into believing that their number one problem in life is a rag-tag band of nose-ringed hippies who somehow managed to compel our media to tentatively begin a discussion about this, and the very modest actions we should take to begin to change it.

Update: And it just might work.

Also, too.

That is all.

In Health Bill, Obama Attacks Wealth Inequality

For all the political and economic uncertainties about health reform, at least one thing seems clear: The bill that President Obama signed on Tuesday is the federal government’s biggest attack on economic inequality since inequality began rising more than three decades ago.

Over most of that period, government policy and market forces have been moving in the same direction, both increasing inequality. The pretax incomes of the wealthy have soared since the late 1970s, while their tax rates have fallen more than rates for the middle class and poor.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03…