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willzyx01 t1_j28w26l wrote

And then they wonder why people don’t vote anymore.

They get paid $200k+, while also celebrate when minimum wage goes up $1 after 15 years of debating.

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Chippopotanuse t1_j296c2n wrote

Oh god…the old “Dems are greedy bastards who don’t care about the working man and minimum wage hasn’t gone up in 15 years.”

Cool.

Well, first, as to governor compensation:

  • How much do you think the executive in charge of 80,000+ employees and $52 Billion+ budget ought to be paid?

  • How does that compare to executive compensation at companies that have 80,000 employees and $52B of revenue?

Second, as to mimimim wage:

15 years ago, in 2007, the MA minimum wage was $7.50. It is currently $14.25. That’s a hell of a lot more than $1. It’s almost double.

But…if you really want to dig into minimum wage history, let’s do that. Let’s see what that debate has been for 15 years. Because 15 years ago, we had a Republican pro-business Governor (Mitt Romney).

Here’s what happened in 2006 when the democratic state legislature wanted to increase the minimum wage to $8.00. (Yes, 8 huge fucking dollars an hour.)

  • In July 2006, the legislature passed a bill increasing the minimum wage to $8.00 an hour, and Romney vetoed it.

Here’s what his dumb ass said:

> “I have spent hours reading a wide array of reviews on the minimum wage and its impact on the economy, and there's no question raising the minimum wage excessively causes a loss of jobs, and the loss of jobs is at the entry level," said Romney when he vetoed the bill.

What did Romney do in response?

  • He proposed an increase to $7.00/hour (which represented a 25 cents an hour increase over the existing rate.)

What did the Democratic legislature do?

  • The legislature voted on July 31, 2006 to override his veto (unanimously in the Senate) thus setting the minimum wage at the higher amount.

Make no mistake about it. If you are a working man and vote R, you vote against your interest.

The Dems have been trying to help folks get better wages and a more affordable lifestyle for decades.

Mitt’s “I did my own research and paying folks more than $8 an hour will kill jobs” statement is laughably false and has never been supported by any evidence.

But by all means, if you disagree, vote for dipshits like Geoff Diehl.

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Bior37 t1_j29olah wrote

>How much do you think the executive in charge of 80,000+ employees and $52 Billion+ budget ought to be paid?

Not 20% more than last year that's for fucking sure.

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Chippopotanuse t1_j29ubzg wrote

  1. You didn’t answer the question. We both know why.

  2. while you might not like CEO pay going up 20% last yer…reality says hello:

> S&P 500 CEO pay rose 18.2% in 2021, far outpacing the U.S. inflation rate of 7.1% last year. But the AFL-CIO says worker wages have made far smaller gains, only growing 4.7% in 2021.

https://fortune.com/2022/07/18/ceo-pay-beats-inflation

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Bior37 t1_j2a4fkl wrote

>while you might not like CEO pay going up 20% last yer…reality says hello: > >

We aren't discussing how much CEOs make, we're discussing what I do and don't like. Just about nobody thinks that CEOs deserve the amount of money they make, and raising wages for politicians to attract CEOs shouldn't be anyone's mission. That just attracts sociopathic business people trying to line their pockets.

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Jackamalio626 t1_j29sgj8 wrote

Not to mention being an executive is the most useless fucking position imaginable.

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hawaiianbarrels t1_j29xhp6 wrote

you’re so right!! That’s why every company in the world pays those people well - they’re completely useless so they choose to pay them more

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Jackamalio626 t1_j29yyc6 wrote

What do you mean THEY?

The executives pay themselves abhorrent amounts of money because they can.

If I have a production team producing my product, a budgetting team managing the resources, and a sales team to sell the product to the consumer, then what the fuck are you even doing other than sitting on the resources barking orders?

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hawaiianbarrels t1_j2a03ag wrote

right! There’s no oversight or competitive hiring practices put in place by the CEO - everyone the world over is just in cahoots even though they never met each other. It’s a miracle since there are thousands of new executives every year despite many of them never having met each other

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Jackamalio626 t1_j2a11bd wrote

You dont need a formal coalition when the ideas and desires of the rich converge naturally.

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Bior37 t1_j2a4h2b wrote

Right? Like, no one thinks a CEO actually deserves the millions they make

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Jackamalio626 t1_j29r5ki wrote

>The Dems have been trying to help folks get better wages and a more affordable lifestyle for decades.

Yeah thats why they just voted to illegalize rail striking, right? To help folks?

The Democrats pay lip service to actual progressive ideas only insofar as it'll get them votes. Once they have them, they'll only do what their corporate masters who funded their campaigns tell them to. They would be right wingers in any other western country.

Your little "lesser of two evils" shpiel to scare people back into line isnt fooling anyone anymore. The democrats have complete control of massachusetts; giving themselves a huge raise while Boston rent spirals out of control is pure unabashed greed.

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Chippopotanuse t1_j29tzmv wrote

Well that’s certainly the baseless talking point that Tucker Carlson screams about all day.

Let’s see what Dems did.

And let’s see what Republicans did.

Dems voted to give the rail workers a raise that their union agreed to with the Biden administration.

And then President Biden signed into law the contract agreement brokered by his administration back in September. It’s a deal that gives workers:

  • a 24% raise over five years,

  • caps on health care premiums, and

  • one additional personal day.

“but the deal is shit because it didn’t give the paid sick days the workers wanted!!!”

Yes. That’s correct. Yes indeed. You got me there.

And why is that? Why don’t rail workers have the sick time they deserve?

Well…because virtually EVERY Republican (all but 6) in the senate was opposed to giving railroad workers sick leave.

> Ultimately, six Republican lawmakers — Sens. Cruz (R-TX), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Josh Hawley (R-MO), Mike Braun (R-IN), John Kennedy (R-LA), and Marco Rubio (R-FL) — joined every Democrat except for Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) in voting to approve the paid sick leave measure.

> But it wasn’t enough. Now unions will have to accept the agreement negotiated in September, averting a potential strike, but leaving one of their key demands unmet.

And so, because the Republicans wouldn’t be willing to pass a cloture vote to end debate…the paid sick leave bill never got past these bullshit and obstructionist filibuster rules in the senate.

And the filibuster allows for minority rule by Republicans and blocks key Dem legislation like “paid sick leave for rail workers” (that the rail workers desperately need) time and time again.

So….if you actually support rail workers and want to vote for their best interests - if you want them to have the paid sick leave they wanted….as I said before, voting for the Republican candidates sends a big “fuck you” to them and stands in the way of that.

But vote how you’d like. And if you vote R, well, keep complaining at the sky and internet strangers using debunked and false talking points when Republicans block bill after bill that would help small business owners and hard working people.

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Jackamalio626 t1_j2bxew0 wrote

Oh sure, they got a raise and a single sick leave usage, but you seem to be narrowly avoiding addressing the part where that bill the democrats voted for also illegalize rail striking, completley stripping the workforce of any bargaining power.

That is the most anti worker shit imaginable. Nothing you say can ever justify that disgusting show of corporate loyalty from the supposed "mostly pro union ever president".

Your attempts to downplay it just so you don't have to face the fact that your party is anti-worker is, to put it nicely, pathetic. Your concern with being on the winning team outweighs your desire to actually see anything improve, and it sickens me.

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RhaenyrasUncle t1_j2a607w wrote

This just proves you could hand Democrats a bucket of shit, and yall would still be like: "See? The Dems care about us. Republicans didn't even try to hand us a bucket of shit!"

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SunsetShivers t1_j2bukhm wrote

Wow, that’s one disingenuous way to spin the situation. But that’s business as usual for progressives these days.

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Jackamalio626 t1_j2bvg7i wrote

No, its not.

The democrats are corporately owned capitalists masquerading as a progressive party by having their only competition be a party so far right that its teetering on literal fascism.

They take their orders from the same rich cabal who owns the republicans. They're puppets controlled by the same set of oligarchist hands.

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SunsetShivers t1_j2bz1p1 wrote

I used to consider myself a progressive, then I realized just how ridiculously counter-productive the rhetoric and motives of progressives were.

A progressive will look at a role call vote for paid sick leave where 49 Democrats vote Yes, and 44 Republicans vote No, and then propagate a narrative that's it's the big bad Democrats and their handlers fault for all of our problems.

Progressives today are not like the ones in the past, the ones who actually cared about creating change and recognized the little wins in society. Today they just want to blow up the system and actively encourage anyone that's not a complete facist Republican to bring it all down with them.

It's funny that whenever Democrats control any part of government and things don't always pan out for the best, progressives and conservatives can collectively come together and spew the "bOtH sIdEs" argument. If I didn't know any better I'd think you were a conservative masquerading as someone on the left, that's just how bad it looks from a liberal perspective.

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RailRoad_Candy t1_j2c1dih wrote

In one of the most expensive cities in the US, with some of the most expensive colleges in the US, everyone is going to college to make less money and is super ant-capitslist while the feed thr beast...lol.

Meanwhile Biden's biggest political donors are Dan Crenshaw's largest donors.

The Overton Window only slides left. Its all a joke and thr hypocrisy is endless.

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Jackamalio626 t1_j2c1vdy wrote

of course it looks like that to you. You partisans have been conditioned to demonize anyone who doesn't vote the way you do.

>Progressives today are not like the ones in the past, the ones who actually cared about creating change and recognized the little wins in society. Today they just want to blow up the system and actively encourage anyone that's not a complete facist Republican to bring it all down with them.

You bet your ass we do. We just don't operate under the delusion that the system can be salvaged. The corruption is far too deep set in the system. Total dismantling is the only option to salvage anything and strive for meaningful change.

Fuck "little wins", thats the same bullshit moderates used to try and slow down the civil rights movement. Neoliberalism's trademark "better than nothing/the other thing" rhetoric doesn't fool us anymore; we're sick and tired of settling for scraps.

Sometimes you gotta stop watering the dead tree and rip it out so the soil can be pout to good use.

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RhaenyrasUncle t1_j2a5m58 wrote

The government isn't run like a business, hence the employees of the government should not be compensated like it is a business. It is public service for a reason.

> Make no mistake about it. If you are a working man and vote R, you vote against your interest.

You have not established this to be true, yet.

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snoogins355 t1_j293yjl wrote

That's not much for what the job entails tbh. If it was private sector, I'd bet they would get over $500k

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