Why Should Burger Flippers Get Paid More Than Soldiers?

[joreth]

One of the things that bugs me about the "why should burger flippers get $15 an hour when soldiers don't?" argument is that it implies that there are people who deserve a living wage and people who don't. It ranks human beings into Worthy Of Survival and Not Worthy Of Survival and it categorizes these people, not on their character or how they behave in society, but on what kind of job they managed to obtain at this one particular point in their lives - a job, I'll remind you, that is one you would definitely notice if everyone who held that job suddenly stopped.

Because, you see, the only people who are making the assumption that demanding a living wage is reserved for one category of people (burger flippers) and not another (soldiers) are the people who think it's appropriate to rank those categories in the first place.

The people demanding the living wage are not saying other people should make less, or even equally low amounts. It's like the ‪#‎BlackLivesMatter‬ crowd - we're highlighting one group who gets shit on because they need that attention right now but it doesn't mean that other lives don't matter. Those of us in support of living wages are not also prohibiting increases for those who already make living wages. "This guy deserves to feed himself and pay rent for working 40 hours a week" is not an argument that leads to or includes "but those guys don't." That is, as a matter of fact, the argument against living wages.

So why should a "burger flipper get $15 an hour when soldiers don't?" (Ignoring whether "soldiers don't" is even true for now). Why should they? I dunno, you tell me, since I'm not the one claiming they should. The question isn't why should one class of people get paid better than another class of people who are doing work that I value more. If that were the question, I'd be ranting about sports salaries vs. teachers, not talking about living wages. The real question here is why *anyone* should be allowed to starve to death or lose one's home when they're willing to put in as many hours as we collectively think is necessary for being "productive" in order to justify keeping those doing the work we *do* value at proportionally low wages.

If so-called "burger flippers" are making better benefits and pay than soldiers, then the people you ought to be mad at are the ones who decided to pay soldiers so little, not those who want to pay "burger flippers" enough to survive, since those paying the soldiers so little are the ones ranking human lives and compensation, not the people who give a shit about everyone being able to survive.

Comments

[dieppe.livejournal.com]

One soldier pointed out somewhere a few key things as well. They typically have their housing paid for, their medical insurance covered, life-insurance---well if they have a spouse or dependents they're typically taken care of, most other issues that people "flipping burgers" have to deal with, they don't. Also, don't forget free educational benefits, retirement at 20 years (if they can make it that long), free medical benefits through the VA until the end of their life. (One can argue that lately the VA has been sucking, but that's a story for another day.)

I'm not, and that soldier isn't, saying that burger flippers are less or more valuable than soldiers---just that it's a different world. (Never mind the high suicide rate of soldiers vs. "burger flippers"... because, well that's another issue for another day.)

But yeah, burger flippers, soldiers, and EMT personnel are all underpaid and the GOP, the 1%, whoever have you would rather us be fighting over who should be getting paid, and who shouldn't, rather than looking at the real cause of the problem... :/

[dieppe.livejournal.com]

Oh, also Hi! And I think I LJ Friended you because of something cool you wrote about Poly somewhere... And look, you post on LJ a lot more than most people I follow! Except for Mary. No, more than Mary, and that's good! Anyway... Hi! :)

[joreth]

Yes, exactly. I read that post, but I didn't have it handy to link to up where I said something about not even addressing the validity of the claim that soldiers make less money. So, even taking that claim at face value, the real issue is that people are starving to death because the people in power think it's acceptable that they have jobs that pay them so little money that they can still starve to death.

What's that saying? Something about how people maintain their power by distracting us from the fact that they're at the top with pointing out how someone "below" us is trying to climb up and take our place. If they can convince us that someone beneath us wants our position, we'll be too busy looking down to notice that they're up there standing on all of our heads.