Wordless Wednesday
Strike!
“We need to go on strike!” My friend Lido Bruhl shouted.
From the You Can’t Make this Stuff up department.
“They can’t rise if the minimum wage is too low to live on,” democratic candidate Hillary Clinton said in a speech Friday.
The minimum wage is the least an employer can pay an hourly employee; it has been pegged at $7.25 an hour since 2009; some states and cities have raised their minimum wage higher than that.
Many politicians want to raise it to $15/hour.
Just 4.3% of hourly workers 16 years old and older earn at or below the prevailing minimum wage but 42% of all U.S. workers earn $15 or less. Since about 60% of the U.S. workforce of some 122.9 million full time workers overall are paid hourly, more than 70 million workers now make less than that magic $15/hour. (BLS defines full-time workers as those who usually work 35 hours or more per week.)
“We need to go on strike!” Lido “Lee” Bruhl is a now retired newspaper editor who lives on Social Security with help from his wife and his daughter Greta.
Wait.
What?
What’s a state-run lottery?
It’s another extra tax on people who can’t do math.
Let’s start with some basic facts about Social Security today.
“If it weren’t for Social Security more than one-third of us older Americans would be living in poverty,” he said. “As it is, we worked all our lives and now we’re living on minimum wage!”
Wait.
What?
Regular readers may recall a chart I created last year to compare the minimum wage with the Federal Poverty Line. People working for minimum wage have consistently earned more than the Federal poverty level every year since 1957. Here are those figures updated.
Among “elderly” Social Security recipients, 22% of married couples and about 47% of unmarried persons rely on Social Security for 90% or more of their income. Ouch!
There are 41,362,000 elderly recipients. About half of them receive the average “benefit” of around $1,300 per month or less. That’s about $43 more per month than minimum wage. And it is considerably less than that after deducting for Medicare premiums.
The definition of poverty is income below $11,770 this year. Working 40 hours at minimum wage earns you $15,080. (Heck, if you work 35 hours at minimum wage, you earn $13,195.) And the average Social Security check will bring in $15,988 this year.
We don’t need to argue about whether “poverty” in the United States doesn’t look at all like the hand-to-mouth existence of the poor in, say, Mexico. If you can afford cigarettes and a smart phone, you aren’t poor.
“I don’t smoke. I can’t afford it,” Lee said. “I don’t have a smart phone for the same reason.”
Now for the politics (and you thought I’d never get here).
The American retirement system is designed so smart politicians can keep American workers and retirees alike in servitude to the government but the idea of raising the minimum wage is designed for people who can’t do math.
Want to know why politicians want the minimum wage to rise?
The income tax you pay goes up when your paycheck goes up.
Want to know why politicians want wages to rise?
It’s simple. The income tax you pay goes up when your paycheck goes up. The income tax rate you pay goes from zero at minimum wage to about 13%, meaning you’ll owe $4,060 when your paycheck goes up to $15/hour. All those new taxpayers.
What happens when 70 million people get a raise to $15/hour?
The first thing that happens is a brief surge in government revenues as payroll taxes skyrocket.
The second thing that happens is 25 million people get their hours cut. The politicians forgot that part.
The third thing that happens is 25 million new unemployment applications. The politicians forgot that part.
The fourth thing that happens is 10 million pissed off workers because they no longer make more than minimum wage. The politicians forgot that part.
The fifth thing that happens is an inflationary spiral. The politicians forgot that part.
The sixth thing that happens is an increase in the Federal Poverty Level. The politicians probably remembered that part.
And almost 21 million Social Security recipients won’t be able to afford the stamp to write to their Congress Critter because they will suddenly be back under the poverty line.
My friend Lee Bruhl was right.
We need to strike.
He’s just wrong about the reason.
Wordless Wednesday
No Respect
Bagpipes get no respect.
Q. What’s the definition of perfect pitch?
A: When you toss a banjo in the dumpster — swish, nothin’ but net — and it hits the bagpipes.
We went to a roots music concert last week, one in which I was the announcer. There was a piper but I was good. I didn’t tell a single bagpipe story and it about killed me not to.
I live in the middle of the Florida Keys on an island I can drive to. Three generations of my family has owned that house, so we have some history but we are newcomers compared to the real conchs.
Q: What’s the first thing a bagpiper says when he knocks on your door?
A: “Pizza!”
I wasn’t even born when the (pre-Global Warming) Labor Day hurricane destroyed the Florida East Coast Overseas Railroad or when Key West’s Mallory Square was the anchorage of pirates, the the center of the shipwrecking industry, or the assembly point of American forces for four wars.
I also missed the Mallory Square Sunset Celebrations of the 60s when the hippies and gypsies and freaks would watch Atlantis rise mythically out of the sunset clouds.
My first drive across the 7-Mile bridge was an eye opener. Florida DOT built the road on top of Henry Flagler’s historic “railroad that went to sea.” They poured two narrow lanes of concrete, then painted the old tracks white and used them as guardrails. The lanes were so narrow that two trucks would slap mirrors passing. Until 1982, when the adjoining new bridge opened, it was the only road cars could take to Key West.
My first memory of Mallory Square in Key West was a funky free-for-all with creosote piers and gravel and street vendors. The Cookie Lady was there as were artists and jugglers, jewelry crafters and a cat herder, and the southernmost bagpiper.
Alfred Hitchcock once said, “I understand the inventor of the bagpipes was inspired when he saw a man carrying an indignant, asthmatic pig under his arm. Unfortunately, the man-made object never equaled the purity of sound achieved by the pig.”
We’ve done the proper touristy stuff. We took selfies at mile marker 0 and at the Southernmost point. We have paraded with the pets at Fantasy Fest. And we have dangled our feet over the edge of the pier, waiting for sunset.
You can’t do that at Mallory Square any more. It is too clean, too concrete and the cruise ships have replaced the pirates.
Will Soto was setting up his high wire poles one evening when SWMBO and I were indeed sitting on the edge of the pier with our (bare) feet perhaps a yard or so above high tide.
“Tonight will be the best night of the year,” Mr. Soto said to us as he set one pole right behind us. He wandered away, pulling his wire with him and worked on the other pole.
Then he came back.
“Tonight will be the best night of the year,” he said again as he tightened the two guy wires. I figured this was just the normal hyperbole, drumming up trade. We were, of course, the trade. This combination of work and commentary continued for a couple more round trips.
He finally went back to the other pole to do the same and then returned.
“Tonight will be the best night of the year,” he said and I couldn’t stand it any longer.
“Why is that,” I asked.
“The bagpiper called in sick.”
Wordless Wednesday
