A. Mark Woodward, Editorial Page Editor
Bangor Daily News
P.O. Box 1329
Bangor, Maine 04402-1329
Dear Mr. Woodward,
The chart published by the Bangor Daily News in conjunction with the article "Republicans Spurn Vote on Minimum Wage" cries out for a response. Aside from the fatuity of comparing the ability of a minimum wage earner to purchase Yankee tickets now and in 1938 (people trying to raise a family on minimum wage don't purchase Yankee tickets) to the downright bald faced lie of comparing a 10 cent hamburger to a 39 cent one (McDonald's cheapest hamburger, as of two hours ago, was 69 cents, not 39, and it would take six or eight of them to make one hamburger the way they were made in 1938), the larger issue is this: why would any well meaning person choose to compare living standards now with those during the height of the great depression?
A fairer comparison would be with 1968 when, according to a recent article in Time Magazine, the purchasing power of the minimum wage was comparable to $7.00 today. And the whole article begs the question of why Republicans really care whether people earning $4.25 an hour get a 90 cent raise over the next two years. The fact is, they don't. It's all those other people that would demand something closer to a living wage that really scares them, like people applying for the type of jobs routinely advertised on local TV Station WVII. "Chef, must have experience", "Experienced mechanic, must have own tools", etc. These jobs typically offer between $5.25 and $6.00 an hour whereas, had the minimum wage kept pace with inflation since the late sixty's, they would now be in the $8.00 to $9.00 range. Holding down the minimum wage holds down the rates paid for all manual labor, and Republicans know it. And beating down labor unions works the same way. When President Reagan broke the Airline Controllers' union he was perfectly aware that he was not driving down just their wages, he was sending a message to all unions (and employers). Just as non-union workers eventually enjoyed higher wages because of gains made by labor unions in their heyday, so are they now feeling the pinch caused by the Republican war against wage earners at every level, not just those earning the minimum.
Republicans from Bob Dole on down tell us every day on television that all the American worker needs is an end to the job killing minimum wage, an end to job killing government regulation of big business, and an end to job killing income taxes on unearned income (capital gains, etc.) Well yes, in the good old days they long for, before the turn of the century, there were no minimum wage, no government regulation of industry, and no income taxes and, by golly, there were plenty of jobs. Why, there was work enough not only for you but also for your ten year old son down there in the mine and if you both worked hard enough twelve hours a day, six days a week, you could have earned a bare subsistence. Or you could have worked in a lumber camp for even higher wages unless, of course, you lost a couple of fingers or a hand and were fired on the spot and docked for the rest of the day. But, of course, that was before those doggone Democrats came along and ruined things.
In those days good rock solid Republican industrialists were able to build thirty and forty room "summer cottages" with marble staircases and fountains all up and down the coast of Maine and nothing much "trickled down" except black lung disease and malnutrition, but "Hey!", they say, "Things will be different this time. Trust us."
Bob Dole, Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey, Phil Graham, George Will - every one of them is far too intelligent and educated to be unaware of any of the above. What really frosts me is their arrogant assumption that we "poor working stiffs" who, unlike them, actually go out and produce something for a living, are not.
Very truly yours,
James F. Seiler