Conservative corporatists should be honest with Americans

[Jack Sprat]

What wage level would it take for you to hire our own American citizens? What would you be willing to sacrifice of your wealth to employ your own citizens?

This is a valid question for candidates like Mitt Romney. If you believe in promoting a better society for the Americans you want to lead, then what would it take for your corporations to open employment for them? What wage level would be acceptable for you and your Wall Street cohorts? 1.25/hr? 75 cents/hr? What? The same wage you're paying to an 11 year old Malaysian to manufacture shirts? Do we have to continue paying taxes for your corporations?

Is the American dream only available to the small percentage of people who already achieved their billion dollar dreams and the rest of America just has to get accustomed to having less, because these fortunate few deserve to keep every dime of their hard-earned wealth that was derived from the hard labor of someone else? How much ingenuity does it take to accumulate the capital of other rich people and produce goods overseas in some hard-stressed corner of the poorest quarters of the world and profit from it?

[rfranklin]

1. American corporations fought to keep Haitian wage at 31 cents per hour...

A Wikileaks post published on The Nation shows that the Obama Administration fought to keep Haitian wages at 31 cents an hour.

(This article was taken down by The Nation due to an embargo, but it was excerpted at Columbia Journalism Review.)

It started when Haiti passed a law two years ago raising its minimum wage to 61 cents an hour. According to an embassy cable:

This infuriated American corporations like Hanes and Levi Strauss that pay Haitians slave wages to sew their clothes. They said they would only fork over a seven-cent-an-hour increase, and they got the State Department involved. The U.S. ambassador put pressure on Haiti’s president, who duly carved out a $3 a day minimum wage for textile companies (the U.S. minimum wage, which itself is very low, works out to $58 a day).


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/wikileaks-haiti-minimum-wage-the-nation-2011-6#ixzz1ZOSIU67r

[saras]

2. If they answered you *HONESTLY* they would look like horror-movie monsters.

The answer isn't so much a number as it is a scream of revulsion, as though you were a cockroach in their underpants. So, much as Trent Reznor said he wanted a guitarist who played not "E F#m" but "Fuck You", they could say "Well, what pay rate would convey that emotion? How badly do we have to pay you to convey our message, that we'd like most of you to die horribly"