Matt Walsh:
Someone alert Feed the Children. Jeff, who messaged me this week, is fighting to survive:
Matt Walsh…. I first started following you when I read your post defending customer service representatives. You also wrote something blasting people who don’t tip, and then last week you wrote criticizing customers who talk on their phones while they’re in the check out aisle. I’m in a the customer service industry so I greatly appreciated these writings. I read them and thought, hey, this guy is on our side. But then last week I saw you Tweet a sarcastic slam against people fighting for a higher minimum wage.
I went back to see what else you’d said on the subject and discovered a lot of ignorance and hate directed at low wage workers. I realized you’re just a fraud and a liar. You pretend to fight for working class people and to be a “voice of the people” and all that bull sh*t, but then you have a problem with giving us a living wage. I know you’ve never been in our shoes as a big shot wannabe famous blogger, but let me tell you what it’s like to try and live on the poverty level minimum wage. I graduated college a year ago. There were NO JOBS to be found (which you’d know if you had a real job in the first place). Eventually I ended up at a fast food place making minimum wage.
I want to start a family, get married, have kids, buy a home, buy a more reliable car, do all the things people in America should be able to do. But I can’t. I can barely to pay my bills as it is. I’m stuck and I’m struggling. The movement to raise the minimum wage to 15 dollars an hour would at least allow me to move into my own place and start a life.
One day maybe I can make money sitting around typing hateful sh*t all day and basically being an assh*le for a living, but right now I don’t have that luxury like you. That’s why I need the minimum wage to be something I can at least survive on. That’s what ALL Americans deserve. If there’s ever a strike or rally in my town, I’ll be there. I’ll be there because of people like you. Or maybe you’d prefer it if all the people serving you food and waiting on you hand and foot just went home and starved to death. I guess that’s what it means to be Christian, right Matt?
-Jeff.
Dear Jeff,
Yes, I’ve certainly only ever lived in luxury. I used to go to sleep in my one bedroom apartment and smile about my privileged existence while I listened to the drug addicts down stairs yell at each other until 3 AM. Sometimes I’d even laugh with radiant joy about my stress-free life, as I cooked some Ramen Noodles while watching the roaches crawl across the counter.
And, when I couldn’t afford to pay the cable, or to turn on the heat or the air conditioning, and when I spent weeks at a time eating nothing but gas station hot dogs and peanut butter sandwiches, and when I worked two or three jobs at once, never had any vacations, rarely had a weekend off, and when I paid for gas with quarters, and started selling my few possessions on Craiglist so that I could afford rent for the month, and when sat alone at nights in my rundown pad staring at the wall in silence, I used to thank God that I didn’t have as hard a life as you, Jeff.
Now, here’s the funny thing: even then, I didn’t whine, and I never waved my arms around and screamed about how I was on the verge of starvation.
I mean, really. For goodness sake, man, get a grip.
‘Starve to death’?
Is that a common workplace hazard over at McDonalds? Are you finding that your co-workers often collapse on the floor and whither away from malnutrition?
“Hey, where’s Steve today? He didn’t show up for his shift.”
“Oh, Steve starved to death last night. He’ll be out for a while.”
Is that a conversation that often takes place in your break room?
It is beyond embarrassing that we live in a country where someone would spend tens of thousands of dollars on a college education, and then move back in with his parents and complain that he is in a fight for his very survival.
No, Jeff, your survival is not at stake. Sure, one day you’ll die, but I can guarantee that ‘minimum wage’ won’t make it on the autopsy report under ’cause of death.’
So I’d recommend that you stop worrying about how you’ll die, and start worrying about how you’re living.
You want a better life, and I don’t blame you. You want more money, and I don’t blame you. The question before you, Jeff, is how to best achieve those results.
As far as I can tell, you have two options:
1) Continue to use your time surfing the Internet, and writing angry emails to bloggers, and organizing minimum wage protests, and sobbing about your tragic lot in life. Sit in idle and wait for the government to come along, lift you on its shoulders, and carry you into a paradise of mediocrity. Hope that the law will magically make it possible for entry level burger flippers to afford homes, and cars, and other things that most of us had to actually earn.
2) Get over yourself. Stop complaining. Stop treading water and start swimming. Decide what you want out of life and go chase it. Make sacrifices. Take risks. Move out of town for a new opportunity, or out of state, or out of the hemisphere, if that’s what’s necessary. Realize that there are other jobs out there, but you have to be willing to do them, and first you have to be willing to pursue them. Stop insisting that there are ‘no jobs,’ and pay attention to all of the people somehow finding these openings that you claim don’t exist anywhere in the known galaxy. Stop seeing yourself as entitled to the American Dream just because you bought a fancy college education, and have now spent one measly year in the job market. Stop belittling other people’s accomplishments, especially when you haven’t yet accomplished much yourself. Stop looking for sympathy. Start looking for a path up the mountain — however treacherous, however dangerous, however hard — and get to climbing.
In the lengthy comments section there is debate over whether unskilled workers ought to be paid only $3 an hour less than four-year college grads like RNs.
It is a good question.
I’ve seen the self-serve check-out stands at both supermarkets and fast food businesses.
Want more of them?
Raise the minimum wage to where they are the only way to keep down costs of the foods.
We used to have manual labor intensive crop picking until unions took over.
Now there are a multitude of specialized crop picking machines!
Don’t study history and be doomed to repeat the mistakes made in the past.
I would really hate to be in the job market today, but I am sure if I were that I would not be worried about minimum wage or whether I had a job or not.
This is exactly the kind of unhinged emotional irrationality that pervades progressive thought.
He ought to be thankful that the Collective hasn’t closed down the fast food joint he works at under the pretense that it creates a food desert. In fact the Collective is moving towards banning fast food restaurants in poor neighborhoods, even though some claim prohibiting people from purchasing junk food with EBT cards and/or food stamps “punishes poor people for the supposed crime of being poor.” Reconcile that one.
Rather than getting angry at Matt Walsh for expressing the nature of reality, Jeff ought to be writing angry letters to his college who sold him an expensive education on the notion that it would help him find better employment, when in fact useful and employable skills aren’t being taught at schools and colleges. Hell, he ought to sue his college for giving him nothing other than a mountain of debt that went to support the preposterous salaries of his professors and textbook authors. He should have woken up to this reality after he graduated and noticed a lack of employers seeking skills in white privilege, social justice, and appropriation.
At the end of the day though, someone needs to introduce the Fight For 15 crowd, to their coming replacements. That’s what happens when your unreasonable demands and oppressive ObamaCare employer mandates render you unaffordable.
Costco now features self-checkout lanes where customers scan the bar codes on their own purchases, then pay by swiping a credit card and signing on a computer scanner. No cash-register employee needed, whether at minimum wage or “living wage.”
Meter Readers are out of work because smart meters communicate automatically and directly with utility companies.
Gas Station Attendants are a thing of the past thanks to pay-at-the-pump machines.
Telephone Switchboard Operators have been replaced by automated phone systems.
Travel Agents are going the way of the dinosaur.
White Castle has started using computer kiosks that let customers place their own orders, unassisted by a paid human beings.
McDonald’s is experimenting with iPads that let customers customize their hamburgers.
They have 7,000 computer centers doing just that in Europe right now.
Panera is deploying the computer kiosks for customers in the U.S.
Enter the work force, then work your way UP.
The job you start with may not even exist in 3 years!