I honestly don’t understand why there aren’t more people who, when given the platform to discuss minimum wage, don’t simply distill it to the simplest of facts:
A forty hour work week is considered full time.
It’s considered as such because it takes up the amount of time we as a society have agreed should be considered the maximum work schedule required of an employee. (this, of course, does not always bear out practically, but just follow me here)
A person working the maximum amount of time required should earn enough for that labor to be able to survive. Phrased this way, I doubt even most conservatives could effectively argue against it, and out of the mouth of someone verbally deft enough to dance around the pathos-based jabs conservative pundits like to use to avoid actually debating, it could actually get opps thinking.
Therefore, if an employee is being paid less than [number of dollars needed for the post-tax total to pay for the basic necessities in a given area divided by forty] per hour, they are being ripped off and essentially having their labor, productivity, and profit generation value stolen by their employer.
Wages are a business expense, and if a company cannot afford to pay for its labor, it is by definition a failing business. A company stealing labor to stay afloat (without even touching those that do so simply to increase profit margins and/or management/executive pay/bonuses) is no more ethical than a failing construction company breaking into a lumber yard and stealing wood.
Our goal as a society should be to protect each other, especially those that most need protection, not to subsidize failing businesses whose owners could quite well subsidize them on their own.
Wages are a business expense, and if a company cannot afford to pay for its labor, it is by definition a failing business. A company stealing labor to stay afloat (without even touching those that do so simply to increase profit margins and/or management/executive pay/bonuses) is no more ethical than a failing construction company breaking into a lumber yard and stealing wood.
Okay so when you sheer a sheep (I’m not 100% sure if she’s carding wool but i’m going to use it as an example as it’s still the basic idea) you don’t get nice locks of hair like with humans, you get a big old clump filled with dirt, oil, and god knows what else
Of course you wash that shit cause ewwww nasty. You can also dye it at this stage, so let’s do that cause we want some pretty yarn
Now we have to get it prepped for spinning! The problem is if we tried to spin it right now it wouldn’t work. All of the hair fibers are all in crazy directions and all knotted up so any yarn we spin would come out an absolute disaster that easily falls apart. But we can fix this via carding! Think of it like brushing your hair, but instead of a brush we’re using THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS OF NEEDLES cause we’re hardcore like that
It’s important to note that normally carding isn’t done so hands-on (although it does look fun) but used with either hand carders or carding machines
Carding, by the way, takes a long freakin’ time and a hell of a lot of arm muscle if you do it by hand. So of course in ye olden days they made children do it while the children’t weren’t busy dying or working in the mines or being stolen away by fae or something
But hey look! Thanks to all of that carding our fibers are now nice and neat and pointing in the same direction! Not only will it be far easier to spin, but it will be stronger too!
And thanks to the magic of this horribly drawn spinning wheel our fiber has turned into yarn! I am of course skipping a LOT of details and it’s way way way more complex and there’s all of this hand vs machine stuff but that’s the general gist of it
If you would report an undocumented immigrant to ICE you would have reported me to the Nazis and I don’t fucking trust you
A note:
I live in a state where you “have to” report anyone you suspect of being undocumented (that wonderful hellhole of Arizona). Now in practice this law has fallen far short, thank goodness. But if you live in such a place and they start enforcing it, here is how you get around it:
Assume everyone who doesn’t speak English is visiting.
Never ask about their job, because if they tell you they work here then you know they’re not visiting. You see them a lot for several weeks or months? Hm. Someone in the family must be ill. That’s terribly tough. They always dress in old, ratty laborers’ clothes? I feel you, my dude, I can’t afford new clothes either, and my dad has the fashion sense of an aardvark, so sometimes it’s not even about “affording” them. They say they’ve been here for years? You must have misunderstood. Spanish isn’t your first language, after all. First and last name? It never came up, or you don’t recall–you meet a lot of people.
And then, if you’re asked: no, you haven’t seen anyone residing illegally in the United States. Just people visiting.
Very good very important addition
Essentially, this is the civil society version of a work-to-rule strike.
Don’t do more than is expressly asked of you, and do what you are asked with such an intense attention to protocol that not asking you at all becomes more effective than even bothering.
In this case:
“Have you seen an illegal immigrant?”
“Could you describe an illegal immigrant, officer?”
*officer describes a person who is in the country without appropriate paperwork, or who has crossed the border illegally*
“No, sir, I haven’t seen any illegal immigrant.”
And this is correct. You have NOT seen an illegal immigrant, because you have no way of knowing if Jose Fulano is here legally or not. And since you can’t see his paperwork (or lack thereof), and did not personally see him cross the border illegally, you are only answering precisely the question asked.
I’m not American, and I have like, three followers, but this is important.
ForLoveFromFear 