Member-only story
Stimmies killed the McJob
A recurring viral genre during the lockdown is photos of signs on the front doors of low-waged establishments (especially fast food restaurants) asking customers to have patience with long wait-times brought on by staffing shortages “because no one wants to work.”
These signs go on to claim that “overgenerous” unemployment benefits in the Biden stimulus have encouraged work-shyness among the lazy slobs of the working class. It’s a complaint that’s been picked up and amplified by the US Chamber of Commerce.
They’re not entirely wrong.
After all, the subtext of these signs is, “Our pay is so low, and our working conditions are so awful, that only the truly desperate would do this job. In forestalling that desperation, the federal government has deprived us of our workforce.”
40 years of wage stagnation and the Clinton-and-onwards destruction of the social safety net has left workers so desperate they continue to do their jobs, even as their employers stole billions from them, with virtually no penalties for wage-theft:
https://apnews.com/article/how-companies-rip-off-poor-employees-6c5364b4f9c69d9bc1b0093519935a5a
The lack of any meaningful prosecutions for wage-theft created the environment in which a restaurateur tortured a developmentally disabled man in order to keep him working 100 hours/week for a decade without any pay at all:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/03/us/south-carolina-man-forced-work-restitution-doubled-trnd/index.html
It won’t surprise you to learn that the overwhelming majority of the victims of wage theft and other employer abuses (up to and including forced labor — that is, modern slavery) are Black and brown.
The complaint that people receiving the anemic stimulus — less than a $15 minimum wage — find them preferable to working for employers whose companies received publicly funded bailouts and mass infusions from the private equity sector leaves out the obvious, important point.
Namely, if no one wants to work for you at the wage you’re offering, maybe try increasing the offer? The…
