Last night, Bill Maher delivered an excellent argument for a living wage, showing how we'd all be better off. Take this and share it with your conservative friends, especially the libertarian ones who don't seem to even believe in the minimum wage at all.
BILL MAHER: And finally, New Rule: Until Ronald McDonald starts paying his employees a living wage, he has to wipe that fucking smile off his face. (audience cheering and applause)
MICHAEL MOORE: Yeah, there we go!
BILL MAHER: I've won you back?
MICHAEL MOORE: I'm with ya on that one!
BILL MAHER: A new study says the median income for fast food jobs is $8.69 an hour. And let's face it, that is barely enough to gas up the car you're living in. Remember this Subway sandwich maker who a couple of months ago, tweeted a picture of himself wiping his dick on the bun?
You can hate him, but you can't really blame him!
Now, when it comes to raising the minimum wage, conservatives always say it's a non-starter because it cuts into profits. Well, yeah. Of course. Paying workers is one of those unfortunate expenses of running a business. You know, like taxes, or making a product. If you want to get rich with a tax-free enterprise that sells nothing, start a church! (audience laughter and applause)
You might think that paying people enough to live is so self-evident that even crazy people could understand it. But you would be wrong.
Michele Bachmann is not only against raising the minimum wage, she is against having one at all. She once said:
MICHELE BACHMANN (1/26/2005): If we took away the minimum wage ... we could ... virtually wipe out unemployment ... because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level.
Put that in your brain and smoke it! You could hire everyone if you didn't have to pay them! And naturally, Ted Cruz agrees.
Ted Cruz thinks it's a good thing that when his Cuban father came to America, he was paid fifty cents an hour to work as a dishwasher. Before becoming Charo. (audience laughter)
When did the American dream become this pathway to indentured servitude — this economic death spiral where workers get paid next to nothing, so they can only afford to buy next to nothing, so businesses are forced to sell cheaper and cheaper shit? Walmart employees can only afford to shop at Walmart. McDonald's workers can only afford to eat at McDonald's. And Hooters waitresses have to wear shirts they grew out of years ago! (audience laughter)
And look, even if you're not moved by the "don't be such a heartless prick" argument, consider the fact that most fast food workers — whose average age by the way now is 29, I'm not talking about kids — are on some form of public assistance. Which is not surprising. When even working people can't make enough to live, they take money from the government. In the form of food stamps. School lunches. Housing assistance. Day care. This is the welfare that conservatives hate. But they never stop to think, if we raise the minimum wage and force McDonald's and Walmart to pay their employees enough to eat, we the taxpayers wouldn't have to pick up the slack. (wild audience cheering and applause)
This is the question the right has to answer. Do you want smaller government with less handouts, or do you want a low minimum wage? Because you cannot have both. If Colonel Sanders isn't going to pay the lady behind the counter enough to live on, then Uncle Sam has to. And I, for one, am getting a little tired of helping highly profitable companies pay their workers. (audience applause)
Especially when I don't even eat at KFC! I mean, I get high, not that high. (audience laughter and applause) And I haven't been to a McDonald's drive-thru since the '80s, because if I want to talk into the face of some red-nosed clown, I'll debate John Boehner. (audience cheering and applause)