Economic Racism: Minimum wage should be kept low ‘for minorities’

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Republican Rep. Tom McClintock says that minimum wage should be kept low for teens and “minorities”.

McClintock said that raising the minimum wage would “rip the first rung in the ladder of opportunity for teenagers, for minorities, for people who are trying to get into the job market for their first job.”

“It’s not supposed to support a family. The minimum wage is that first job when you have no skills, no experience, no working history. That’s how you get into the job market, that’s how you develop that experience, develop that work record, get your first raise, then your next raise, then your promotion.”

McClintock continued: “If your labor is an unskilled person just entering the workforce is worth say $7 an hour at a job and the minimum wage is $10, you have just been made permanently unemployable. That first rung of the economic ladder has been ripped out and you can’t get on it. That is a tragedy.”

While a person is struggling to put food on the table because all they can find is a minimum wage jobs bringing home poverty level checks, do not expect any help for the working poor as they attempt to climb the “ladder of opportunity” from McClintock who likes to repeat lies told to him allegedly by his California constituents.

In 2013 on his Facebook profile McClintock wrote, “The Food Stamp program – now called SNAP — was originally intended to provide basic commodities to the poor. Yet I cannot count the number of constituents who have complained to me in recent years about standing in a grocery line and watching the person in front of them use SNAP cards to buy luxuries that these hardworking taxpayers could not themselves afford.”

McClintock did not clarify what “luxury” items are being sold in a grocery store but I guess food is a “luxury” item when you are poor and making only $7 per hour. Who are these people staring down the items people are purchasing in checkout lines in grocery stores and why?