Half-Cocked And Ready To Fight

Yesterday I left a nasty comment on the blog of a Harvard Economics Professor who was arguing against the federal minimmum wage laws and somewhat in favor of the Earned Income Tax Credit (but only as a last resort). A litany of supportive comments followed his article, most championing the conservative wisdom of a professor who resides within maybe one of the most powerful learning institutions in America.

His blog was actually in response to who he called "misguided students" who marched in support of a living wage for so-caleed "unskilled" staff on the Harvard campus. Because of Harvard's vast endowment, which would easily allow the school to afford such a move, the professor argued that it would be artificial and, overall, a bad message for business in American and bad move for our economy.

I went off on him.

Not because I'm qualified to argue with a Harvard economics professor, (I'm just a pseudo-intellectual, community-college drop-out) but because I'm a hothead and I'm tired of people so far removed from the struggle for working-class Americans making decisions that so profoundly affect them - especially when they're never experienced the day-to-day lives of the working poor. In other words, men in ivory towers shouldn't talk about how $10.51 an hour (in Boston no less - you try and survive on that, mother-fucker ) is too much money. Especially when the benefactors of current economic policies are enjoying such an overabundance of profit made with the blessing of George The Younger. It's extremely offensive to some of us.

Let's face it, the rich rely on the sweat of the working poor - always have, always will. Fine, theat's an economic hierarchy that will never change - at least not as long as humans control the resources. But don't think you can rationalize that injustice in public without risk of getting a virtual tomato smashed upside your insulated Harvard melon. There's a whole lot of us out here who are pissed-off about our fading prosperity while fat-cat Harvard-educated MBA's look for new and complicated ways to screw us out of the meager wages we get.

Anyway, I'm kind of afraid to even go back to that website. I'm sure I'm getting throttled on every side by conservatives who think I'm not qualified to argue the point, missed the point completely, don't understand the point, or otherwise am not worthy of being scraped off the bottom of their right wingtips. But, I must retrieve my comments for posterity...


Well, you’ve answered for me how our so-called “leaders” become so out of touch with their working-class constituents. You talk about the economics of the working poor as if their circumstance were merely the natural order of the universe, and that your access to an Ivy League education and a brilliant career were a birthright. Don't talk to me about what a unskilled labor is worth until you've at least "walked the walk" like Ehrenreich did. She's a liberal, and it sent her running for the sanctuary of her own priveleged life. What’s lacking from this conversation is a sense of humility and any attempt at finding humanity in economics - which works out so well for those at the top. I can't believe there's an argument about whether a working-class gig at Harvard is worth $10.00 bucks an hour? Who deciides? Unfortunately, you do. And you’ll spend years arguing why the very least among you don't deserve enough money for a clean place to live and insurance against a medical disaster. I never hear a serious discussion about the social cost of a company pulling a $100,000,000,000 out of an economy in a single year while their employees are eating Ramen noodles bought with food stamps and wonder if that pain they feel in their gut is from poor nutrition or stomach cancer. Their choice is to work for that company, or the other national behemoth down the street who offer the exact same lack of wages and benefits. If there is any justification for a minimum wage in America, then there must be justification for a maximum profit as well. If there isn’t, then I hope you’re all be prepared for the social cost that stress and status anxiety will bring to your doorstep. Will you chase those lowly souls back across the bridge by force or will you foolishly ask, “Why do they hate us so much?”