Building From the Ground Up

SONIC WAS REALLY GETTING SLAMMED, about the time school let out, and the girl was in and out, carrying trays, at break neck speed. When she finally brought my order, and asked me if there was anything else I wanted, I told her that I want her to get paid fifteen dollars and hour. She looked at me surprised, and I asked her what she thought she should be getting paid. Her reply was roughly anything around nine an hour. I didn't ask her how much she is actually making now, but I gather that its less than nine an hour, which is really too bad. She could be making as little as seven twenty five an hour, on federal minimum wage. Sonic servers don't get paid like restaurant servers, two dollars an hour, expected to live on tips, do they? God, I hope not. Servers should make a good hourly wage, and get a share of the tips. Obviously, a Sonic location has to make enough profit to satisfy corporate headquarters and make it worthwhile for whoever the franchise owner is, but only after the workers are fairly paid, which means fairly well paid. As I explained to the young lady serving my food, the way to create economic prosperity for all is to start at the bottom, and build up, work up, demand side trickle up economics, instead of trickle down supply side Reaganomics. Get money into the hands of the poor, turn them into consumers and spenders, and who will they buy from, other than the producers, the business owners, corporate and otherwise. Pay the workers, even if it means limiting profits, and the profits will increase in time. It seems to me that anyone working as hard as she was and wanting only nine an hour is undervaluing herself, and it makes one wonder whether that is common among the low wage community; self undervaluing. Perhaps now and historically the working class has undervalued itself, maybe by being inundated with propaganda from the ownership. When I was sixteen years old, in 1971, I was paid one dollar an hour to wash dishes. I remember knowing somebody who made six dollars an hour in 1980, and I thought that was a fortune. In 1989, in Aspen, I started at six an hour at a grocery store, and moved up to six fifty, which I was happy with. The Aspen McDonalds was paying eight dollars an hour, meanwhile, somebody told me, and I couldn't believe it. I was amazed at the high wages in Aspen. So, the point is, maybe we low class working stiffs have been brainwashed into placing too little value in ourselves, and maybe that has contributed to the historic and current-day exploitation of the working class. then, whenever we organize, and the room is full of us, we somehow seem......common............THANKS FOR READING!