Occupy.com | Op-Ed - Tuesday, 12 November 2013
In one of comedian Chris Rock's routines, he observes: "You know what that means when someone pays you a minimum wage? You know what your boss is trying to say? 'Hey, if I could pay you less, I would, but it’s against the law.'"
The humor works because, like the boy who cried "the king has no clothes,” Rock is stating something obvious which mostly goes unspoken: that if it wasn't for such laws as the minimum wage, established to appease the militant mass workers' struggles in the 1930s, bosses would reduce workers' wages and benefits to near zero.
This is because workers' wages come, naturally, at the expense of their bosses' profits. Since bosses are in business to make as much profit as possible, they are compelled to cheat their workers out of every dime their labor creates, within the limits of the law.
Reforms such as the minimum wage benefit workers by forcing businesses to pay them more, but the political system behind such laws is not a neutral arbitrator in worker/boss conflicts. Its purpose is to secure and enhance the power of big business, even if that means occasionally curbing business owners' greed in order to maintain stable, profitable commercial relations.
The Shrinking Minimum Wage
In the absence of a mass workers' movement that can challenge corporate dominance, power gets measured in dollars -- and nowhere is this clearer than our political system. Pulling the strings behind the puppet show of two-party politics are the 1%, who have amassed such a concentration of wealth that they have squeezed out any effective opposition -- not to mention consideration for the interests of the vast majority of voters.
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