Thursday, December 5, 2013

Drinking the Kool-Aid.

Today, across the country, hundreds or thousands or, maybe, tens of thousands of fast-food workers are planning to go on strike. They're hoping to boost their wages to $15 an hour.

The fast-food monoliths seem to be scoffing at this effort. The economics, they say, of the industry do not support those kind of wages.

That's probably true, but consider this: A fast-food worker making minimum wage would have to work full-time for 640 years to make what the CEO of McDonald's makes in one year.

There are those who say, "this is the way the world works, this is the business model, there's no going back." They accept this gross disparity, this sinful inequity.

I cannot.

Yesterday I posted a link to a clip from "On the Waterfront." In it Father Barry (Karl Malden) says "What happens to the least of us, happens to all of us."

Dignity, humanity, compassion seem to be relics of an earlier age.

Are you ready to give up on them?

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