World's Richest Woman Makes Case for $2-a-Day Pay: Should We End Minimum Wage?

This woman was born rich, and has never worked a day in her life.

She's certifiable.

If American Wages had merely kept pace with the increase in Productivity and Corporate Profits, the Middle Class would be healthy and the taxes paid to Social Security and Medicare would have those funds overflowing with cash.

Instead, a concerted effort was made to bust Unions and lower wages. And it worked.

The first time the planet Earth saw a Middle Class was probably right after the Black Plague.

One out of three people died.

The orchards, vineyards, herds, and fields were all still there, but now there wasn't enough people to work them.

So employers started feverishly competing for labor, bidding up wages from dirt-poor to comfortable.

Those survivors were working long hours to keep up, but they were getting PAID.

That wealth, transferred from the Rich to the Poor, created a Middle Class.

Before the Black Plague, the Merchant Class was tiny; only the Butcher, the Baker, and the Doctors qualified.

But afterward, people were making enough money to get an education for their children, and they started to move out of poverty.

There was a brief summer of Prosperity that lasted a generation.

The large Middle Class bought STUFF with their wages. Bread, Meat, Wine, education for their kids, clothes instead of cast-off rags...

And the Butchers, the Bakers, and the Doctors prospered from selling to the Middle Class; they became Merchant Princes.

Ah, but the survivors of the Plague had kids. And the labor shortage was resolved.

Employers immediately began throttling back on wages. They wanted all the profit for THEMSELVES.

So the Middle Class began to shrink.

Less wages meant less opportunity. Less education too.

And finally, it was back to the Wealthy 1%, a tiny Merchant Class that sold meat and bread to the Wealthy, and a vast class of the Working Poor.

Sound familiar?

It's happening again here in America; in Europe they have laws that protect the workers.

The Minimum Wage in Denmark is about $18 an hour. And the average German employee at BMW makes over $50 an hour.

See, Corporations make TONS of money. And they pay very little in taxes. So all that money goes to Shareholders in the 1%.

Not to workers. And the Middle Class shrinks.

If you get rid of the minimum wage then you're going to be in the situation where employers are going to get greedy and start to pay their employees less money and expect them to do more work. When this happens, the workers are the ones that'll suffer as they won't be able to afford to pay their bills because they work for a greedy corporation that want to get richer at the expense of others. What then happens is that the workers can't afford to live due to there being no minimum wage and employers lowering their wages under the pretence that they're not obligated to pay a minimum amount. When your workers can't afford to live off their wages, they need to get outside help- logically this would be in the form of welfare payouts. Therefore you would actually see the economy decline as money would start circulating- people pay taxes on their wages, which goes to other people in the form of payouts, which goes back to the corporations in the form of paying bills, which goes back to the workers in wages, ad infinitum.

With a minimum wage your workers can at least budget themselves as they can get an idea of how much money they're going to be earning BEFORE they start working. A lot of employers don't give out details on pay structure due to the potential for rival companies getting wind of it and making a more attractive pay offer. In this scenario, with no minimum wage your potential workers won't know what they're getting themselves into until it's too late. With a minimum wage at least people can work out if they can afford to live before taking a job, and let's face it, the right to be able to live comfortably is a right we all have.