Growing Support for Raising Minimum Wage to $10

This is truly a pathetic proposal:

The White House has thrown its weight behind a proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to at least $10 an hour.

"The president has long supported raising the minimum wage so hard-working Americans can have a decent wage for a day's work to support their families and make ends meet," a White House official said.

President Obama, the official continued, supports the Harkin-Miller bill, also known as the Fair Minimum Wage Act, which would raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, from its current $7.25.

The legislation is sponsored in the Senate by Tom Harkin of Iowa and in the House by George Miller of California, both Democrats. It would raise the minimum wage — in three steps of 95 cents each, taking place over two years — to $10.10, and then index it to inflation. The legislation will probably be coupled with some tax sweeteners for small businesses, traditionally the loudest opponents of increases to the minimum wage.

...Under that provision, small businesses would be able to deduct the total cost of investments in equipment or expansions, up to a maximum of $500,000 in the first year.

First of all, I laugh mirthlessly in the general direction of anyone who can say with a straight face that a minimum wage of $10/hour is "a decent wage for a day's work" that will totes allow people to "support their families and make ends meet." A paltry and insulting sum that will still be wholly insufficient for meeting all basic needs in most parts of the country is more accurate. Never mind what it will be two years from now.

And, you know, fine—give small businesses a tax break, but how about closing all the goddamn loopholes exploited by massive global corporations and using the billions of tax dollars we ought to be collecting from them, which they instead keep as profit that does not get passed on to their workers, and using that money to subsidize a real living wage that small businesses can't afford to pay their workers?

Capitalism is garbage in a whole lotta ways—but one of the worst is that it is built on the damnable lie that everyone earns what they deserve. And there are far too many high-earning people in the US who believe that they work harder behind a desk than every single person who works a behind a counter. Bullshit. BULLSHIT.