Deroy Murdock:
Democrats’ relentless efforts to tell Americans what to do might be a few microns less annoying if they obeyed the rules and exhortations that they inflict on everyone else. Alas, hypocrisy has become a core Democratic principle.
Consider one pot that they pound loudly: raising the minimum wage.
“We owe it to workers across the country to make sure our minimum wage is set to a level that works for them and their families,” Senator Patty Murray (D., Wash.) insisted last month, as she introduced the Raise the Wage Act. It would boost the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $12.00 per hour by 2020 — a 66 percent hike. Added House co-sponsor Representative Bobby Scott (D., Va.): “We can’t build a strong economy on the backs of impoverished workers.” Thirty-two senators have co-sponsored this bill, as have 165 House members.
Amazingly, the Employment Policies Institute reports, 94 percent of these 197 Democrats pay their interns zero. Senator Murray pays her interns bupkis, as does Congressman Scott. According to EPI (minimumwage.com), such minimum-wage-hike cheerleaders as Senator Al Franken (D., Minn.), House Democratic chief Nancy Pelosi of California, and Democratic National Committee chairwoman Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida also pay their interns nothing.
But wait. House Democratic whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland responds, “Interns will gain practical experience.” Senator Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.) says her interns will develop “communication, problem solving, and time management skills.”
True. But interns could do this and make more than $0.00 per hour if their liberal bosses did not subject them to what Karl Marx denounced as “the alienation of labor.”
Of course, if private employers tried to offer interns real-life know-how, marketable skills, and, say, $5.00 per hour, they would be prosecuted.
The Gang of 197 should explain why it’s okay for them to pay interns $0.00 per hour, yet it’s a federal crime for others to pay them up to $7.24, even if these young people want to make some money, rather than none. Any private-sector payment would be less exploitive than the “wages” of these Democratic “defenders of the downtrodden.”
L.A.’s union bosses are two-faced enough to merit changing the Hollywood sign to read: HYPOCRISY.
Meanwhile, just days after pushing a $15-per-hour minimum wage through the Los Angeles City Council, union bosses are trying to sledgehammer an exit out of the new law. They want to exempt unionized companies from the higher wage!
“With a collective bargaining agreement, a business owner and the employees negotiate an agreement that works for them both,” the L.A. County Federation of Labor’s Rusty Hicks told the Los Angeles Times. “The agreement allows each party to prioritize what is important to them.”
