the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Jan 7, 2013
On New Year’s, after almost two months of political soap opera, the Democrats and Republicans announced that they had reached an agreement to reduce the budget deficit. To almost everyone’s relief, the politicians announced that the taxes for the vast majority of people would not go up. They also promised that only the very wealthiest would pay more taxes–which was long overdue.
On both counts, the promises are false, completely false.
Working people will pay higher taxes this year. Every person who works for a living will pay 2% more in Social Security payroll taxes on all their wages under $113,700. Because this payroll tax is taken from the first dollar earned, this tax increase is really a two per cent pay cut. That’s $1,000 a year for a family earning $50,000.
As far as the much hyped tax increase for the wealthy, not only is it really tiny, it only has to be paid after the first half a million dollars. This tax increase is especially meaningless considering that many of the very wealthy pay no taxes at all. According to the most recent figures from the IRS, in 2009 six families who reported over 200 million dollars in income paid no taxes. And it is all perfectly legal, given all the tax loop holes for the wealthy. So, all the propaganda about how the wealthy are going to pay more taxes is completely laughable.
Even more laughable is the fact that the Democrats and Republicans used the same new tax deal to slip in hundreds of billions of dollars worth of tax breaks for all the biggest companies, including banks, industrial companies, movie studios–even NASCAR. Job growth, as the politicians claim? Forget it. Companies just pocket the higher profits, then recycle them back to the wealthy through higher dividends, stock buybacks and interest payments.
Whatever small increase in taxes that the government may take from the wealthy in the new tax bill, the government gives right back–with even more money tacked on–through all the extra tax breaks to the same big businesses that the wealthy own and control.
The tax code was already extremely regressive. Over the last three decades, payroll taxes paid by the working population have been raised so much, they now make up almost half of all the taxes taken in by the government. Meanwhile, the politicians have slashed the proportion of taxes paid by corporations by two-thirds, while they have slashed in half the top tax rate paid by the wealthy.
The new tax law will make the tax code even more regressive. It will make permanent a whole series of tax cuts for the wealthy that up until now had been temporary, including tax cuts on big inheritances, dividends, and the profits from buying and selling property, stock and businesses.
Bad enough. But this is just the beginning of the attacks that we will face in the next year–and we better know it. For the politicians have made it clear that the next big attack will be against Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The Democrats and Republicans have scheduled a new “fiscal cliff” deadline in two months. Once again, they will threaten that if they don’t get what they want, the government will begin to run out of money–triggering new cuts in government programs. Of course, the entire crisis is fake, just like the one on January 1 was false–dreamed up to justify reductions in Social Security and Medicare benefits we already paid for.
The elections are over–and Republicans and Democrats are working together to attack the working population. The Republicans are the stalking horse, telling outrageous lies, while the Democrats pretend to be our friends so they can slip in the knife.
We’re in the middle of a fight. But up until now, only one side, the wealthy and the politicians, are fighting, while the working population is not. So, we better goddamned get going.
Jan 7, 2013
Two hundred school districts in California are saddled with debt that requires them to pay back, on average, about six times as much as the amount they borrowed! According to a Los Angeles Times investigation, Poway Unified School District in San Diego County borrowed 100 million dollars, and will have to pay back about 10 times as much–nearly one billion dollars! The West Contra Costa district near San Francisco issued 2.5 million dollars worth of bonds and will pay 34 million dollars, or almost 14 times as much.
These districts issued what are called CABs (Capital Appreciation Bonds), in order to put off debt payments for years. As a result, decades later, the interest on the loans alone will have surpassed the principal many times.
CABs are “the school district equivalent of a payday loan or a balloon payment that you might obligate yourself for,” said California state treasurer Bill Lockyer. As every worker knows, if you are forced to take out payday loans, you’ll pay a heavy price, because you have fallen into the jaws of sharks.
“This is part of the ‘new’ Wall Street,” Lockyer added, “it has done this kind of thing on the private investor side for years, then the housing market and now it’s public entities.”
Taxpayers, that is, working people, will have to pay for this, and many times over. All so that the banks can make more and more profit. That’s the beauty of capitalism–for the sharks, that is.
Jan 7, 2013
Many of Chicago’s working class neighborhoods have problems with lead contamination.
Neighborhood environmental activists found an empty lot next to an elementary school that had 14 times the amount of lead considered dangerous for children, as well as 23 times the allowed level of arsenic. The site used to house a metal smelter, which polluted the ground, but has long since closed. Children now cut across the lot to get to and from school.
The activists referred the empty lot to the Environmental Protection Agency, but the EPA took more than a year just to conduct their own tests, and have yet to take any action.
Instead of waiting, activists put crime-scene tape around the lot, and put up signs warning residents.
That got people’s attention!
Jan 7, 2013
Three hundred teachers, parents, students and community activists paid a surprise visit to Chicago’s Gold Coast Hyatt Hotel on Veterans’ Day.
The protest was regarding the transfer of five million dollars in TIF funds to build a new hotel in Hyde Park, near the University of Chicago. Half of Chicago’s property tax income is diverted from the public schools and other services into TIF or Tax Increment Financing funds, which are then given to developers. These millions are being taken out of schools starved for money, and given over to support business ventures like the Hyatt’s.
To put the icing on the cake, Penny Pritzker, who sits on Chicago’s school board, is a billionaire heiress who owes her fortune to the Hyatt Hotel chain. Pritzker is responsible for the Chicago Public Schools’ budget. After the TIF millions are sucked away to groups like the Hyatt, Pritzker and her cronies on the board have the nerve to tell residents that the schools are in a severe budget deficit, and, as a result, they desperately need to close schools.
When the crowd arrived at the hotel, about half of them poured into one of the hotel’s lobbies and held a public “lesson” on how the TIF funds rip the schools off.
The head of the school board later berated a union official at the Board meeting, saying the teachers union “was not civil.” Apparently, it’s not polite to yell “thief” at those who rob us while claiming to work in the interests of our students!
Jan 7, 2013
North Carolina’s outgoing governor Beverly Purdue granted pardons of innocence to the Wilmington 10, a group of civil rights activists falsely convicted in 1972 of firebombing a white-owned store a year earlier.
The conviction of these nine black men and one white woman was an obvious frame-up, and their convictions were overturned just eight years later. They were convicted based solely on the testimony of three witnesses and sentenced to a total of 282 years in prison.
All three witnesses admitted they lied. One stated that prosecutors offered him a minibike in exchange for his testimony. Another had a history of mental illness, which the prosecutor knew and hid from lawyers for the defense. Prosecutors deliberately caused a mistrial in order to get a judge and jury favorable to their case.
Despite all the evidence of the frame-up, it took another 34 years for the politicians to officially clear the names of these ten activists, whose only crime was to have stood up against racist injustice.
Such is the example of the fabled American system of “democracy” in action.
Jan 7, 2013
The documentary “The Central Park Five” shows why and how one Latino and four Black teenagers were maliciously and falsely prosecuted in the 1989 case of the beating and raping of a white woman in New York’s Central Park.
After the five teenagers spent years of their early lives in prison, another guy, Matias Reyes, who was serving a life sentence for rape and murder, confessed to the crime in 2002. His DNA matched the evidence, confirming that he was the real rapist.
The falsely accused, falsely convicted teenagers were finally exonerated and released from prison.
From the beginning it was obvious they had been railroaded.
After the rape was reported, the five teenagers, who had been clear on the other side of the park that night, were picked up and railroaded for the crime.
Detectives held the five of them overnight, in isolation from one another, and interrogated them without food or sleep and with shouts to their faces. After they were bullied for more than a day, the terrified teenagers “confessed” to the crime, falsely implicating each other, in order to go back to their homes.
The teenagers were from working class families living in Harlem. Their parents could not be present at the interrogations during the day, because they were at work. They could not get competent legal help to intervene with the interrogations, because they could not afford it.
The teenagers, Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Kharey Wise, Yusef Salaam, and Raymond Santana, all between14 and 16 years old, were convicted based on their supposed “confessions.” The so-called “confessions” in fact confused actual details and events leading up to the rape.
There was no physical evidence to connect any of the teenagers to the crime. DNA found on the victim’s body did not match any of them. No traces of the victim’s blood, hair or skin could be found on any of the teenagers. In fact, all the DNA evidence found on the victim’s body came from a single unknown person.
But this did not matter. A white female investment banker from New York’s Upper East Side had been raped. Someone had to pay. The city, including its mayor, the prosecutors, the detectives and the cops, the media and the super rich, acting like a pack of wolves, descended on the teenagers. These powerful people only wanted a conviction—it mattered not whether the five had committed the crimes.
This was not a trial, but an attack with racial hatred on working class people, a lynching in the most basic sense of the term.
This remarkable documentary is showing only in a few theaters. If it shows near you, try to see it.
Jan 7, 2013
At a press conference on January 2, Mayor Rawlings-Blake and Fire Chief James Clack praised Baltimore firefighters and emergency personnel for helping to reduce city fire deaths last year to an all-time low. They pledged, “We will continue to strive for a safer city when it comes to fire deaths....”
Yet on the very same day, Assistant Fire Chief Jeffery Segal ordered Advanced Life Support (ALS) equipment used by firefighter paramedics to be removed from city fire trucks!
The next day, after word of Segal’s order had spread among firefighters–and at least one local newspaper inquired about it–his order was reversed.
So much for the mayor and her fire chief continuing “to strive for a safer city!” In a city that has one of the highest fire death rates of any–three times the national average–it took some firefighters to raise a stink to get the order reversed.
Jan 7, 2013
The Emancipation Proclamation was issued by President Lincoln 150 years ago, January 1, 1863.
As usual, there is more to the Civil War story than we learn in school. We learn that the Civil War was fought to free the slaves. Well, not exactly.
When the South seceded in 1861 and the Civil War began, the North was undecided about the future of the Southern slaves. Lincoln famously wrote, “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.”
After a year and a half of war, the North hadn’t won the quick victory it had hoped for. A new step in the war was necessary. Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863. The Proclamation only freed slaves who were held in the states that were “in rebellion.” Slaves in the states that were not at war against the union, like Maryland, Tennessee and West Virginia, were not freed.
But the Proclamation set the stage and gave a push to further developments. At the end of the war, Lincoln pushed through Congress the 13th Amendment of 1865, outlawing slavery entirely.
The movie Lincoln, in theaters now, is a Hollywood drama about passing the Amendment. We review it below.
Jan 7, 2013
The movie Lincoln tells the story of how Abraham Lincoln and his allies got a recalcitrant U.S. Congress to ratify the 13th Amendment outlawing slavery in 1865, just before the end of the Civil War. The movie shows the disgusting racism of the vast majority of the Congressmen, even of many who eventually supported the amendment. And it shows the backroom deals and cajoling needed to get it passed.
There are some telling moments in the story, for example, when the leader of the Radical Republicans, Thaddeus Stevens, tells Lincoln that slavery and racism have broken the moral compass of the white people of the United States. And we get a small glimpse of the horrible slaughter produced by the Civil War.
But this movie largely ignores the question of why Lincoln and the majority of the Northern ruling class decided they needed to free the slaves.
The North was fighting to prevent an independent South from tying itself to England as a semi-colony. The emerging Northern capitalists would be hamstrung by losing Southern cotton and Southern markets to English capitalists.
As the war dragged on, it became strategically obvious that all slaves had to be freed—both to take labor power away from the South’s economy, and to add men to the Union army.
Slaves had already been running away in huge numbers to Northern lines, demanding guns to fight their former masters. Throughout the South, on plantation after plantation, slaves ran away or outright refused to work. The movie briefly shows black soldiers, and they are treated with respect. But the movie ignores the power that black men and women exercised, as the laboring class of the South, to help determine their own fate.
The Civil War effectively was the Second American Revolution, destroying slavery, the heart of the social and economic system of the South. Four million slaves got their freedom, costing their “owners” about one hundred billion dollars in today’s money. The plantation economy was no longer to be a brake on the development of U.S. industrial capitalism.
Lincoln, a radical Republican, personified the interests of the developing Northern capitalist class. Their Civil War gave slaves the opening to struggle and win their freedom for themselves.
Regardless of the larger economic reasons for the war, and whatever its limitations, the Second American Revolution, led by Lincoln, did eliminate slavery as a system—even if it did not eliminate the racism associated with the development of capitalism itself. This Hollywood movie is worth seeing for the partial version it shows of that story.
Jan 7, 2013
In India, a 23-year-old woman, a physical therapy student, accompanied by her companion, was forcibly carried onto a bus by a group of six men, who raped and beat her before kicking her out. She died some days later from multiple injuries.
This attack unleashed a movement of protest, which focused on the government of India’s indifference toward violence against women. The repeated demonstrations forced the Prime Minister to publicly denounce her rape.
At the end of the 1970’s, a court decision acquitting police who committed the same crime unleashed demonstrations and contributed to the development of a feminist movement in India. Recently, an internet video showing twenty men attacking a young woman launched a debate about the behavior of the journalist who filmed the scene but didn’t intervene.
Today, the president of India is a woman. In the past, Indira Ghandi was Prime Minister for sixteen years. Having women at the head of state hasn’t prevented the many attacks on women, who are extremely devalued in India.
How Indian society treats menstruating women is very telling. Girls are told by their mothers, who were in turn told by their mothers, not to cook when menstruating because they will pollute the food. Worse still, women in some areas are forced to live in a cowshed throughout their periods. In many schools, at best there are dirty latrines; at worst, there are no bathroom facilities at all for girls to change themselves. Girls are encouraged to stay home and get married and thus pass on the cultural taboo of menstruation.
Even if the constitution of India pretends that women and men are equal, and even if India doesn’t have a monopoly on prejudices against women, bearing a daughter in India is considered a dishonor. Paradoxically, in the big cities and among social groups considered more advanced, the elimination of daughters is the most developed. Thanks to the modern techniques of ultrasound and abortion, pregnant women often abort as soon as they know they are bearing a female. In rural areas, where there is no ultrasound or abortion, the killing of girl babies is common for the same reason.
As a result, out of 250,000 crimes committed annually in India, 90% are aimed at women. The result is clear: The country has a lot more men than women.
An Indian feminist, Urvashi Butalia, explained to a newspaper, “rape isn’t something that occurs in a detached manner. It’s part of the ongoing violence, well rooted in our society, which targets women on a daily basis.” She rightly concluded, “To demonstrate is important. It shakes the conscience of a society and pushes people toward change.”
Jan 7, 2013
Early in November, thousands of people in Spain demonstrated against foreclosures. Many demonstrated in Madrid, Murcia and the Basque area, denouncing the “banker murderers.”
The anger was all the greater since two weeks before, two people facing eviction killed themselves, just before being thrown onto the street. The right-wing government of Rajoy, in accord with the Socialist Party, admits today that the procedures need to be revised. But what they’re speaking of is only a slight tap of the brakes. What needs to be imposed is an abrupt halt: evictions must be prohibited.
Since the beginning of the crisis in 2008, some 400,000 families have been struck by foreclosures: 300,000 when the Socialist Party under Zapatero was in power and 100,000 since Rajoy took power in December 2011. In 2012, there was a 20.6% increase compared to the year before, more than 500 evictions per day!
In fact, the income of working people is constantly going down. Unemployment is at 25%. Change in the labor law has made layoffs easier and less costly for the bosses, in both the private and public sectors. Wages are being cut and prices increased.
But the problem for those who have lost their home isn’t just the bank seizure of their homes. The interest on their loans continues and families have to pay for something they no longer have. It’s often a lifetime sentence, which plunges them still more into despair.
Since evictions are widespread, solidarity of neighbors and the population has developed, in particular thanks to the mobilization aroused by the 15-M movement of the “indignant” ones, which began in May of 2011. Dozens of evictions have been prevented or postponed. There are daily tragedies and revolts which confront these attacks on the population.
The banks, like Bankia, for example, received billions of dollars from the State to cover their speculative operations, especially in real estate, which otherwise would have caused them to go bankrupt. On the one hand, they pocket State money from taxpayers, and on the other hand, they make their victims pay by skirting the legalities of mortgage agreements. It’s getting worse and worse. Many judges are denouncing the law’s inhumanity and the main policeman’s union warned that it would defend its members who refused to take part in evictions.
In addition, the European Court of Justice seized on the abusive procedures of unpaid loans and a moratorium could be decided on. All of a sudden, the administration and the Socialist Party speak of an eventual revision of the law, which would permit, not the elimination of debt, but allowing families to stay in their homes by paying rent, on a case by case basis. But at this time of crisis, the minimum should be that all families keep their homes.
Jan 7, 2013
The book “Our Harsh Logic: Israeli Soldiers’ Testimonies from the Occupied Territories 2000-2010” is a collection of 145 testimonies by veteran soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces who object to the Occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. They are active in the organization Breaking the Silence.
Veteran after veteran is revolted by the attitude toward the Palestinians which comes down from higher officers. Soldiers are ordered to make loud noises at night in occupied neighborhoods, simply to intimidate. They are made to close off villages, even to ambulances. Looting and brutality toward civilians is encouraged during patrol, and no one is held accountable.
The hundreds of men and women who work with Breaking the Silence continue to expose Israeli military policy, and in this 2012 book their words are available in English.
Jan 7, 2013
A group of 28 General Motors autoworkers from the Lordstown Assembly Plant in Ohio are suing both GM and the UAW after a change in classification cut their pay by more than 40 percent.
According to their attorney, Ken Myers of Cleveland: “Over several years, the company deprived these people of higher wages and seniority while the union stood by and did nothing.”
GM and the UAW tried to have the case thrown out, but at the end of December, a judge ruled that the workers had a strong enough case for it to be heard in court.
Workers are seeking back pay, plus reinstatement to permanent positions with Tier 1 pay and benefits.
No matter what the outcome, it is encouraging to see 28 workers stick together and fight for their rights in such a David vs. Goliath situation.
Which group of workers will be next? The bigger the band, the sweeter the music!
Jan 7, 2013
The House I Live In is a powerful movie about the “war on drugs” and its enormous human costs. It is well worth seeing.
The movie starts by showing how both drugs and the war on drugs have shattered the life of the filmmaker’s childhood caregiver, named Nannie Jeter.
We see police, prison guards, and even a judge express enormous frustration at their roles in this “war.” All of them realize they have helped shatter many lives and families by sending addicts to prison, and done nothing to reduce the damage caused by drugs themselves. One guard, who calls himself an advocate for law and order, even compares the mass incarceration of poor people for nonviolent drug crimes to genocide.
Since the 1970s, this “war” has accelerated under both Republicans and Democrats. It is the poorest layers of the population most severely hurt by it. For years, it’s obvious that wealthy middle class people caught with drugs don’t suffer the same consequences as the poor.
One of the most telling moments comes when David Simon, the creator of the TV show The Wire, explains how many corporations make enormous profits from the drug war and the mass incarceration of poor people with few job prospects. “All these Americans we don’t need anymore,” Simon paraphrases, “let’s see if we can make money off locking them up.” That sums up the attitude of this country’s capitalists toward the poor, and the rationale behind the continuing drug war.
Jan 7, 2013
Do you love getting near the water, maybe to swim, fish, picnic, or go out on a boat? Then you will get hit hard by “The Bay,” a horror film by Barry Levinson, Oscar-winning director of “Rain Man,” “Diner,” and more recently “Wag the Dog” and “You Don’t Know Jack.”
“The Bay” takes place in an imaginary, fun-loving beach town in Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay that lives for its boardwalk. But the mayor gave approval for a huge water treatment center serving the massive chicken farming operations nearby. As steroid-loaded chicken manure is dumped into the Bay, the mayor lies and insists the treated water is safe to drink. The federal government also covers up the awful threat.
But one July Fourth, all the tourist partiers in town suffer horrible symptoms. They rush to the hospital ... where the workers are dying, too!
Barry Levinson’s movie bloodbath is make-believe, but Baltimore residents remember the very real algae bloom and fish kill in the Inner Harbor last spring, and the dozens of fish kills in the Bay over the last 30 years coming from such pollution.
Be entertained by this 2012 movie, now available from Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, etc. But know that there is a serious reality underlying it.
Jan 7, 2013
The Federal Government will start selling its shares of GM this year at a low price. This sale will result in a huge loss for the government, estimated to be around 10 to 12 billion dollars.
So who is expected to pick up the tab? The workers! The GM shareholders will win, since they buy back the shares very cheaply.
During last year’s presidential campaign, Republican candidate Mitt Romney said he would sell all the government’s shares in GM as quickly as possible, even at a steep loss. Now, the government is following exactly what Romney advised.
No matter who’s the president, GM wins–at our expense!
Jan 7, 2013
Erika Menendez pushed Sunando Sen into the path of an oncoming New York subway train on December 27. Sen was killed.
Why would someone do this? Menendez explained her actions by saying “because I hate Hindus and Muslims ever since 2001 when they put down the twin towers I’ve been beating them up.”
Menendez wasn’t acting in a vacuum. In acting on this hateful impulse, Menendez followed through on the overwhelming amount of propaganda directed against Muslims ever since 9/11. This is a propaganda encouraging all New Yorkers to fear anyone wearing a turban, anyone they see as different, “not American.” It’s a campaign of hate being encouraged by government authorities and right- wing politicians who seek to align the general public behind their violent attacks against the populations of other countries.
The United States government has been waging a war against the people of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq for more than ten years, killing, destroying, and mangling thousands, supposedly in the name of 9/11. So, is it really so surprising that someone could be drawn into perpetrating a horrendous crime like this?
The State of New York charged Menendez with second-degree murder as a hate crime. She could go to jail for life. And while it is true that she killed one man out of hate, the United States government fomented her hatred and in these wars has far surpassed her terrible crime.
Jan 7, 2013
On December 14, 2012, Adam Lanza took his mother’s assault rifle, shot her to death, and then massacred twenty-six children, teachers, and school workers in Newtown, Connecticut.
The ghastly crime in a very well-off city–“how could something like that happen here?”
It couldn’t be ignored: once again a mass killer had used an assault rifle, a military firearm with high-capacity magazines. There was an immediate public reaction against the easy access to such weapons. The NRA (National Rifle Association), the chief public relations and marketing shill for gun manufacturers, heard the reaction–and went silent.
One week later, the NRA’s leader announced his answer to the problem. In a fit of lunacy, he proposed that every school have an armed guard, and that teachers be trained to carry concealed weapons.
Surely it is insane to want every child educated in an atmosphere implying that a gun battle may break out at any moment! It’s lunacy to pretend that there are no more rational social solutions to the endless procession of mass murders, spousal murders, suicides and violence.
But behind the NRA’s lunacy is cold calculation. Manufacturers of guns, and ammunition, and accessories need sales. They need markets. Through the NRA, they promote any idea, no matter how insane, they play on any available fear or prejudice, in order to point toward the buying of their products as the only answer.
After decades of promoting more and more gun sales as the answer for all social problems, the Newtown massacre only shows again how completely ineffective that answer has been.
Those who want to seriously deal with the real problem aim at the reality that underlies all of our major problems: competitive, cutthroat capitalism and its social impact.
Jan 7, 2013
As the Dow Jones Industrial Average soared to record highs, economists released the “not-so-great” news about the U.S. job market. Job growth is expected “at best” to continue where it is. The unemployment rate, that measures only workers still looking for work, is still at 7.8%. The real numbers that include all those who have given up searching for work are much higher.
At the rate jobs are being added, it will take more than 10 years to get back to 2007 employment levels. And these levels were already bad.
But the bosses continue in giving themselves Christmas gifts into the new year: record profits, stock market all-time highs, fiscal cliff gifts like reductions in inheritance tax, while we inherit what?
A wholesale disaster!
What boss under capitalism worries about our employment when the stock market is where the profits are!
Jan 7, 2013
Media outlets pushed the big news that ten states, covering a million workers, will raise their minimum wage on January 1, 2013 in order to take inflation into account. Washington state’s wage went up to $9.19 an hour, and Rhode Island’s went up 35 cents to $7.75 an hour, to name a couple.
So, are these workers in these states able to bask in the lap of luxury because they are getting another 15 to 35 cents? Hell, no! A gallon of gas, a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk can easily wipe out that $9.19 an hour. So what pays rent, transportation, insurance, utilities and clothes? Even the highest of the minimum wages is unacceptable, not to mention the $7.25 to $7.40 in most states.
The minimum wage–no matter which rate–is a poverty-level wage. In the richest country in the world, where bankers and CEOs make billions, the real issue is not how much to hike the minimum, but a social fight to demand that all wages should be good living wages.