Far Right says getting paid for working is "free money"

Hang on to your faces, because Team Tyranny is pushing a new argument against better wages. The biggest danger to America posed by this meme is that right-wing talking points like this always seem to be quickly treated as incontrovertible truths by The Media.

Recently, a woman was fired from her job at a Days Inn hotel in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, because she dared to express support for a minimum wage increase in a Washington Post interview.

In the Post's initial article, the woman's boss - the inn's manager Herry Patel - blasted Arkansas's wage increase (which was approved in November by 66% of voters). Patel was quoted as saying, "Everybody wants free money in Pine Bluff."

He thinks workers being paid 25 cents more per hour is "free money"?

The Far Right's new talking point is that being paid for actual work is a form of welfare. I'm reminded of Jeanine Pirro lecturing a litigant to get a job when she already had a job. True to form, the class warriors who spend their days posting on newspaper comment sections have attacked the minimum wage worker in this story under the assumption that she also gets welfare. If her boss would have paid her enough, she wouldn't need welfare. Understand?!

It's a downright miracle for the 1% that there isn't a nationwide general strike going on because of the economic tyranny of low pay. A lot is wrong in America today, and much of it has been rightly exposed. For example, Indiana's disastrous new antigay law has created such a backlash that it threatens to upend the entire Republican Party - and the Republican Right deserves every bit of criticism they've gotten for this law. But the economic leg of the progressive 3-legged stool is still underpowered - which is all the more surprising when you consider that America's working poor is such a huge constituency.