By Patricia Lee Sharpe
Red state leaders have decided to starve their citizens into accepting underpaid jobs instead of persuading employers to offer a living wage. They are cutting off those $300 per week unemployment benefits. Unskilled labor, it seems, is getting uppity. The peons want more money. They want benefits. They want to work, studies show, but not for the crumbs of a rich society.
They may be out of luck. That’s not the American way. America has always run on cheap Labor. Let’s take a look at history.
Slavery: The story begins in 1619, a date that racists are trying to erase from children’s history books. That’s when slavery first contaminated the territory that was to become the United States. The descendants of those enslaved Africans continue to be subject to a systemic racism that keeps the majority of them poor and most of them fearful of the police. As if cheap cotton produced by enslaved people weren’t a big part of what made America rich.
Indentured workers: Simultaneously, white laborers from the British Isles and elsewhere sold themselves into a form of time-limited slavery. They indentured themselves for the cost of passage across the Atlantic. Unlike black people, they couldn’t be stigmatized once they’d worked off their contracts. In fact, many of them eventually acquired slaves of their own.
Chinese workers: Once the railroads spanned the continent thanks to the hard labor of Chinese workers, many of whom died in the process, laws were passed to prevent further immigration from China.
Immigrants: Unversed in English (except for the Irish) and unschooled in American ways, the first generation usually worked for low wages. Their children, unlike people of color, tended to disappear into the privileged white population. All too often, by this time, they had learned to scorn black Americans as much as their native born friends do.
Spanish-speaking undocumented workers: These days they do the ill paid, really tough, dirty work in America. Because they are undocumented and can’t complain, they come cheap.
Non-union workers: Not having the bargaining power of unionized labor, they have to take what they can get, which often is niggardly.
Women: From nurses aids to female executives, they get paid less—often much less—than men in the same profession. Even so, sexism has kept them out of many good jobs over the years.
Housewives: The cheapest labor of all. Since they aren’t paid, they don’t even rack up social security benefits.
During the 2016 election period Republicans in Florida (and elsewhere) bashed Democrats with the socialism label. Now, it seems, Republicans themselves are interfering with the workings of capitalism, which expects wages to rise, automatically, when workers for a given, too low wage can’t be obtained. Even though some companies have responded in the classic way by raising hourly pay rates, Republicans—who also oppose a minimum wage that’s a living wage—are preventing that mechanism from working more broadly. They are ending that life-saving $300 before its statutory termination in order to force anxious people into unsavory jobs as soon as possible—including, for instance, mothers who can’t find (or afford) the child care that would allow them to return to work with peace of mind.
But then today’s Republican party is notoriously free of principle. And logic. And compassion. When it comes to underlings of any color they prefer the whip of desperation.