The fifteen dollar minimum wage isn’t a thing I’m personally invested in. The last time I worked for that little was in 2004, when I took a pay cut to get there because it was worth it to me, to be a Webmaster! at last.

Since then, in rough terms, I’m used to making twice that, leveraging my specialized graduate degrees to make what still amounted to a barely living wage, because at one time I could do so without much collateral brain damage–not counting the last three-four years of jobbing it, when the neural toxicity spiked to alarmingly high levels, and hurt me for real.

If and when I do dip my toes again in the waters of wage slavery briefly, it sure won’t be for 30K or less anyway. Forty … maybe. That’s the real floor, and it works out to $20 more or less.

But …

It’s not just me I care about, either.

Nobody working for a living, especially full-time, should have to live in poverty, and especially not in a world where billionaires are allowed to exist, and even celebrated.

Walmart used to staple food stamp forms to their job applications, while many members of the Walton family were on their way to billionaire status. That’s a fucking obscenity for many reasons, not the least of which is that food stamps are a gift from the taxpayers, so that Walmart was literally asking all of us to subsidize their starvation wages. This is the very definition of welfare for corporations.

Fifteen dollars an hour might not be a starvation wage, in some parts of the country, but in others it definitely still would be. Not to mention that even at fifteen, the Walmarts of the world will still cap most of their slaves at 29 hours a week so they don’t have to give them even pretend health care.

All in all, it’s hardly a radical notion. I’ve heard ‘radicals’ say that if wages were supposed to keep pace with prices, the real minimum should have risen to $24 by now already, much less by 2025, which was what the $15 bill extended it out to. Fifteen is a bare minimum, and it’ll be less than adequate four years from now when the bill would have had it happen.

Little enough to ask, by any measure.

What I am personally invested in is holding good old Joe to his promises. He owes me morally, for my vote.

It’s not going real well.

I’ve talked to several Dems who’ve shaken their heads at me when I pointed out that $1400 is not $2000, taking a condescending approach to my simple mathematical ethics.

It’s not about the six hundred, people. It’s about integrity. It’s about daring to fretfully believe any god damn word that falls out of the mouth of any corporate Dem, any Dem, ever.

That’s exactly how I feel about a $15 minimum wage.

It was the singular thing that Bernie was able to get Biden to commit to during their debate. He knew he had no shot at getting Joe to promise health care for all, or a Green New Deal, or any of the other basic things he should be doing anyway.

So he pressed him on the fight for fifteen, and Biden was grudgingly forced to say yes to it.

Now he’s telling us how he was all for it, but is being stymied, not by Republicans this time, but by that pesky Senate Parliamentarian.

Seriously. That’s what he expects us to believe. His spokesdrones have trouble keeping a straight face about it when confronted by even the loyal soldiers of the mainstream media outlets. It’s shamefully transparent and everybody knows it.

Just as with Pelosi and the stimulus from early July to late December, they’re not doing it because they don’t actually want to do it–their donors wouldn’t like it and the donors are the tail that wags the dog.

For detailed coverage of the developments to date, I again find myself pointing you to the estimable Richard Medhurst. Enjoy.