Poor, Misunderstood Chris Christie

[Content Note: Class warfare; worker exploitation.]

Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie says everyone misunderstood him when he said he was tired of hearing about the minimum wage.

The governor, speaking at a Garden State diner, explained that most people missed his point — and he's come to accept that.

"My comments are never almost universally interpreted the way I mean them," he said. "But that's OK. I'll be very clear. I'll say it again."

The potential GOP presidential candidate reiterated his statement that nobody's parents were hoping for their kids to earn minimum wage.

"The President wants to focus (on minimum wage) because he's a class warrior," Christie said. "What he wants to focus on is the minimum wage. I don't believe that that's what our focus should be. Our focus should be on creating better paying jobs for everyone in our country."

Hey, Republicans—you know who would make a terrific presidential candidate? Someone who says his comments are never interpreted the way he means them. Please nominate this guy immediately.

Anyway.

Christie says he didn't mean exactly what he said, because what he really meant was that people like President Obama who want people to earn a livable wage are waging class warfare, but people like him who want to entrench the exploitation of low-wage workers to continually enrich the already-wealthy are not waging class warfare, because up is down.

And, like most of the mendacious shitlords in his reprehensible garbage party, he pretends that the redistribution of wealth upwards is not class warfare by masking his contemptible policies behind facile rhetoric about "creating better paying jobs for everyone in our country."

But literally the only way to actually do that is by raising the minimum wage, unless he is proposing to eradicate every minimum wage job in the country.

Let me repeat myself (again): What these insufferable, vainglorious, classist captains of self-aggrandizing bullshit seem never to grasp, or possibly just acknowledge, is that if you want to live in a capitalist society that gives you the opportunity to get nasty rich, then we can't all be wealthy. And if you want to be the kind of person who doesn't pump your own gas, or make your own sandwiches, or clean your own house, or manicure your own fingernails, or drain your own dog's anal glands, or build your own car elevator, then there are going to have to be people who fill all those jobs.

And most of those professional, hard-working people will put in at least 40 hours a week, or more, and even still, many of them won't be given healthcare benefits, and many of them won't earn enough money to feed a family, and many of them won't be able to save as much as they'll need for their retirement.

People who honorably dedicate their time, energy, and talents to jobs that might not pay well are indeed entitled to something—to not work their whole lives only to find themselves poverty-stricken, or hungry, or homeless after one small (or not small) financial crisis. And if we're not going to ensure that every job comes with a livable wage, access to affordable healthcare, and retirement benefits, then we've got to provide a robust and well-funded social safety net.

I don't think that's asking for much, in exchange for a lifetime of providing service to their chosen vocation.

But Christie does. His party does. They think it is asking too much for people to be paid a livable wage and to be guaranteed healthcare and food and shelter until they die, in exchange for their labor.

(Which is to say nothing of their contempt for people who cannot provide labor, for any one of a number of reasons, not least of which is prejudice and inaccessibility.)

And then they have the unmitigated temerity to accuse advocates for a livable wage of being the ones waging class warfare, while refusing to even be honest about the fact that their "solution"—CREATE GOOD-PAYING JOBS FOR EVERYONE!—is completely incompatible with their capitalist model, which is built on the foundation of innate exploitation and the fallacy that the market fairly determines the value of labor.

Even in the most generous interpretation of what Christie's saying, at best he intends to imply that minimum wage work should only be done by teenagers or part-time workers looking for a little extra cash, not people trying to support themselves and/or their families. Which is still a totally shitty position. No one should be exploited for their labor. No one's job should be treated like it isn't a real job.

"Our focus should be on creating better paying jobs for everyone in our country" just isn't an honest or meaningful or remotely reasonable suggestion.

It's appalling that our media does not push back, hard, on this rank nonsense, by asking one entirely simple question: "But what does that actually mean, Governor?"