I know that we Americans have short memories, but...

I recall in the mid 90's seeing a for hire message at the Mickey D's in St. Peters. The starting pay was $10 per hour. McDonald's made huge profits at the time despite paying double the minimum wage and they didn't have to raise prices to do it.

Today we're expected to believe that they'd go broke if they paid a living wage of $12 per hour, but that figure doesn't even keep up with inflation ($10 in 1996 is equivalent to nearly $15 today).

And it's bullshit.

Then we're told that people just need to "work harder." Great, so now you're working two (nearly) full-time jobs and still not making enough money to keep up with inflation, and the employers are just fine with paying you the bare minimum of what they can legally get by with.

Yeah that's bullshit too.

I'm so tired of seeing this systematic effort to keep poor people poor and powerless. This is not a competition with winners and losers. So long as any Americans live in poverty, we as a country are a losing team. When those same people can work themselves to death and die in poverty, then we're just pathetic.