Commentary: AOC Claims $24 – Not $15 – Should Be the Minimum Wage
Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York has equated her fight for a $15 minimum wage to a compromise and said she thinks all workers should be paid at least $24 per hour for their time. During an interview…
Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York has equated her fight for a $15 minimum wage to a compromise and said she thinks all workers should be paid at least $24 per hour for their time.
During an interview with MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan on Monday, the congresswoman attacked moderate Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who is opposed to a wage hike, while discussing the Democrats’ use of the coronavirus pandemic to jack up wages.
She further claimed that a $15 an hour minimum wage is actually a compromise, and that anyone who disagrees that her on the issue is living in a “dystopian capitalist nightmare.”
“People are sleeping in their cars, they can’t afford baby formula, there are basic goods that people can’t afford to live on” she said, noting that the current federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.
“It is deeply, deeply shameful that we are even having this conversation. Because when you take the minimum wage from several decades ago and you actually account for inflation and productivity gains to today, it should be $24 an hour,” AOC added. “So we need other Democrats to understand how deep of a compromise $15 an hour is.”
Apparently the congresswoman’s goal is to bankrupt every business in the country and have us all live off of printed money through a never-ending series of monthly stimulus payments.
That’s exactly what such an outlandish minimum wage would lead to. What incentive would there be for anyone to work after unemployment is commonplace and the government takes care of you until the system collapses? Maybe that’s the point. Perhaps this is what a radical Democratic socialist revolution looks like.
The median wage in the country was, as of 2019, $19.14 an hour, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The median hourly wage in California, where living is cost-prohibitive for so many people, is $21.24, while it is even higher in AOC’s home state of New York at $22.44.
Under Ocasio-Cortez’s plan, essentially every lower-income and middle class worker would get a pay raise — regardless of merit, skill or work ethic. That would mean that people like nurses, police officers and paramedics would make the same salary as the kids who serve them in drive-thru restaurants — and all too often those kids forget valuable assets, such as napkins and condiments.
DMV clerks would be making more than the national average, which would be a travesty, if you’ve ever been to a DMV.
Democrats already abandoned their fight for a $15 an hour minimum wage in the Democratic-run city bailout known as the third coronavirus spending bill, which is currently being debated in the Senate. They were forced to surrender that such an increase in wages would bankrupt business everywhere and put people out of work.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, $15 an hour nationwide would kill 1.4 million jobs over four years, and that’s probably a conservative estimate.
Leave it up to AOC to demand that entry-level and teen workers make the same wage as the person who draws your blood at the doctor, which by the way would be boiling after your premiums skyrocketed by the time of your next annual physical.
Phlebotomists recently reported making a median wage of $16 an hour, according to ZipRecruiter. These people are paid to find your veins and hit them in the right spot with sharp needles, and we desperately need them. Their $16 an hour would jump to $24 an hour — on par with a 17-year-old Burger King employee.
Of course, with such a wage hike, both of the above would be out of work and probably surviving off what little condiments the Burger King kid remembered to put in the bag. Millions of others would lose their jobs as well.
This is all, of course, nonsense. All of it. But what is truly troubling about this — and is the key takeaway — is that AOC has now been elected twice by the people in Queens and the Bronx. Conservative blue bloods have for years warned about socialism. While not enacted to a degree which would content a person like AOC yet, the age of socialism is upon us, and it’s apparently very popular in New York City.
Luckily, AOC seemed to come to her senses on Tuesday, when she again “compromised” by proposing a minimum wage of a mere $22 an hour, which she noted is what Danish McDonald’s employees make.
The congresswoman neglected to mention that Denmark doesn’t have an ever-growing influx of illegal immigrants, and that the country has some very strict immigration laws — meaning the country doesn’t have an exponentially-growing welfare state.
AOC lives in a fantasy world — one where there are no consequences, the relationship between cause and effect has been canceled and hundred dollar bills grow on wind turbines and fall from the sky like global warming-induced snowflakes.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.