They're Not Making Pennies Anymore, But They're Still Pinching Them

Billionaires and their enablers are aghast at what they guarantee would be the dire consequences  of the City Council's bill that proposes the raising of the hourly minimum wage for employees of small businesses to 30 dollars in 2032.

They warn of total economic disarray, including inflation, unemployment, closures and self-exile of the commercial tax base.

Among the prophets of doom is "multimedia superstar" (according to his own website) Sean Hannity, who has cultivated his brand of the regular, all-American kid who exemplifies the work ethic of non-parasitic patriots,  did menial jobs, paid his dues as a self-reliant youth, modeled how to pull oneself up by one's bootstraps (not so easy when you're shoeless) to weekly earnings, according to Celebrity Net Worth, of almost 1 million dollars, and owning approximately 900 houses in seven states.

So he's one of us.

You can still hear his voice cracking with vulnerability, as he shares with us the personal toll of mounting costs of bread and gas. I bet he also shares our pain about the expanding pockets of air in bags of potato chips.

If our friend (he tells his audience to call him that) Sean can swallow the bitter pill of austerity, so can we.  Through their empathy, the fabulously wealthy have our back. 

Or their knives do.

A New York-based moneybags who owns more businesses than an octopus has tentacles, known for his breathtaking political connections and clout, is John Catsimatidis. His signature line is "What the heck is going on?"

He rhetorically asks at the end of his radio show,  "And what do we all stand for?" to which his guests obediently reply in chorus "Truth, Justice and the American Way."

I guess Superman never had his people copyright that motto.

J.C. owns luxury high-rises in multiple states, chains of grocery stores, the United Refinery Company, hundreds of gas stations, aviation interests, a sports team and WABC radio, where all his sycophantic talk show hosts unctuously flatter their boss on the air on an almost daily basis.

He laps it up in his jocular, effusive manner. He doesn't seem to take himself overly seriously and is among the less odious New York Warbucks Daddys. He proves that sophistication and culture are no prerequisites form entrepreneurial genius.

He doesn't know sonnet from snot, it sure sounds like.

But he has intimidating behind-the scenes influence on New York City government policy. When he commands an audience, nobody turns him down. He is also a limelight boar. His radio co-host Rita practically ranked him with Marlon Brando for his bit part in the recent movie "Marty Supreme." 

Catsimatidis believes that a 30 dollar minimum wage is antithetical to common sense. Unlike many other despots of industry, he doesn't sound like he has a visceral loathing of the common man and woman. He is a college dropout and didn't emerge from the birth canal gagging on a flush of portfolio.

Nonetheless, he doesn't skimp on self-targeted indulgences. He spent over a million dollars on his daughter's wedding, and when exploring a mayoral run around twenty years ago, he said at the time that he would spend around 30-40 million dollars from his own pocket change.

He had a high stakes meeting with Mayor Zohran Mamdani late last month, after having proclaimed on his radio show that if Mamdani were elected, he might close Gristedes and D'Agostino supermarkets, which he owns, and perhaps high-tail it out of New York on the caravan of  sulking billionaires. 

But it's complicated: Catsimatidis has a fortune in contracts with New York City, delivering fuel to pubic schools and other government buildings. He won't want to jeopardize them by speaking too critically of the person who could divert those deals elsewhere.

Loose lips sink ships. And can dislodge empires.

Catsimatidis may have to work out a delicate balance. He mustn't be combative, though the fighting fit entrepreneurial behemoth must feel like he's walking a tightrope wearing a barbed wire jockstrap during a tornado. 

No matter who is in power and what accommodations are made through legislative, judicial and executive action, there will always be extremes of wealth and poverty. The abyss between them will  never close. But the present disparity now  is the most monstrous of modern times.

Even the plutocrats who allegedly want to humanify unrestricted economic Darwinism to allow for the survival of even a sampling of those who are not among the fittest, have continual forensic audits of their assets performed and every last loophole blasted open and tax deduction invoked, to ensure that even a philanthropy-oriented government can't touch their windfall-kissed assets, and do them collateral damage, for the suspect purpose of redistribution to the poor.

The compensation ratio between the average CEO and their employees is more extreme in our country than in any other industrialized nation. If robber barons, both from old and new money, could have their lifespan extended to a thousand years, and have intractable diarrhea every minute of it, they could afford to wipe their butts with tissue fashioned of gold bullion, and never dip into their funds.

Both rightist and leftist oligarchs go to heroic lengths to harbor their stashes from the tax wolves, although one would be more genteel, and the other less apologetic when making excuses for themselves.

Economists like Stephen Moore, Larry Kudlow and Steve Forbes insist that a 30 dollar minimum wage, six years from now, would have a cascading and catastrophic effect on our financial structures and relationships. They peddle the fallacies that the minimum wage has always been intended for, and in practice limited to, brief, entry-level positions, especially for students, and that salary plateaus for other jobs will have to be reconfigured to maintain proportionality.

In other words, the insidious domino-effect of a helping hand across the board.

The argentocracy warns that a nickel increase in the minimum wage will collapse our world-envied financial ecosystem. "We're not going to take this lying down!" said the CEO of the Queens Chamber of Commerce, who, like other self-imagined guardians of the treasury, practically needs to be sedated at the thought of giving worker a break of not just crumbs, but even a crust of bread.  

Perhaps as a sabbath treat.

Many billionaires and libertarian deviants actually favor the abolition of any minimum wage altogether. They have faith that the laws of free markets will answer their prayers in the hopes that when job applicants become desperate enough and there is cutthroat competition amongst them, employers will move in and select the lowest bidders among them, profiting from the savings.

The lower the wages, the easier the pickings.

The Economic Policy Institute estimates that without the proposed minimum wage boost when planned, 36 percent of the city's workforce would be paid less than thirty dollars an hour. Their Family Budget Calculator confirms that a family of four would require an annual income of $134,000 just to pay for basic necessities.

No profligate spending on museum tickets for their kids!

Fischer Phillips, a pro-management law firm, cautions "the proposed bill would prohibit retaliation against employees who assert rights under the law, file complaints, or assist in investigations," adding that "adverse action within 90 days after an employee engages in protected activity would create a presumption of retaliation."

Title for a whistleblower's memoir: "The 91st Day"?

The new law, which would not apply to government workers (the federal minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 since 2009) would require employers to keep payroll and wage records for at least six years.  Food workers, who are now paid sub-minimum wages because their salary is supplemented by tips, which presumably puts them over the minimum wage high-water mark, would be paid a salary "equal to at least two-thirds of the applicable minimum wage."

Fear not, plutocrats: no number of incremental boosts to the chicken scratch begrudged to wage slaves will jeopardize your dominance over their wills and their bank accounts.

Periodic and substantial minimum wages exceeding the usually  understated "cost of living" should be embedded in law. It should be sufficiently ample to endow every worker with the material security and peace of mind to partake of the bounties of life as participants, not servants.