Just a Perfect Idea from a Terrific Guy

Charles Koch, one-half of the infamous Koch Brothers duo, conservative corporatists worth around $50 billion who are seeking to turn the US into a giant playground for exploitative corporateers and the 1%, has a super plan to help the poor:

We want to do a better job of raising up the disadvantaged and the poorest in this country, rather than saying 'Oh, we're just fine now.' We're not saying that at all. What we're saying is, we need to analyze all these additional policies, these subsidies, this cronyism, this avalanche of regulations, all these things that are creating a culture of dependency. And like permitting, to start a business, in many cities, to drive a taxicab, to become a hairdresser. Anything that people with limited capital can do to raise themselves up, they keep throwing obstacles in their way. And so we've got to clear those out. Or the minimum wage. Or anything that reduces the mobility of labor.

Anything that reduces working class mobility—like the minimum wage!

This would be fucking hilarious if it weren't so horrific. Koch actually believes that a minimum wage impedes financial security—and no wonder, really, because corporate douchebags like him treat it like a maximum wage. "Well, if the government is going to force me to pay my workers some amount, that's all I'm going to pay them. I would totally pay them more, but I'm mad at the government for telling me what I have to pay them, so I'm going to punish workers by paying them only what the stupid government requires."

That is the sad and dishonest mantra of robber barons across the country, who claim to want to pay workers more, but pay them the bare minimum out of spite. Or so they claim. But if business owners were as generous as they assert, or would be if the stinky government stopped telling them what to do, there wouldn't be a need for a minimum wage in the first place.

It's the same bullshit argument conservatives make about the social safety net as a whole. "This isn't government's role! Charities should be doing this work!" Okay, players. I'm sure you'd just be funding charity (secular charity, that doesn't make, say, Bible classes a requirement for access to help) left and right if only the government just did away altogether with food stamps and Social Security.

Such garbage.

The problem with the minimum wage isn't that it exists. The problem with the minimum wage is that it isn't a livable wage.