WAGES: Red states embrace poverty

This Republican-Democrat thing is so false. The biggest problem facing the U.S. is wage stagnation and the selective socialism that enables it.

Money is power. Ninety-five of the 100 poorest (lowest paid) U.S. counties for median per capita income are in red states like Idaho. Evidently, red states favor poverty over fairness.

Every day people have their lives impacted by a lack of power to choose a better life. Choices like two-parent households instead of single parents who bear four times the poverty, who marry Uncle Sam’s handouts because he pays better than Mr. Minimum Wage boyfriend. Choices between no Christmas gifts, or another loan from payday lenders that thrive in red states (especially near military bases) due to red-state absence of usury laws.

What we really have now are limousine liberals posing as Republicans getting filthy rich while their workers rely on handouts to supplement their paltry wages. This is not sustainable. This is not the common good. It’s exploding deficits. It’s over populating our prisons since 19 out of 20 inmates are from single parent poverty.

U.S. worker wages have been stagnant since 1967 after inflation. LBJ to Obama. Party politics has just been a distraction to keep our eyes off the main issue: Which is selective SOCIALISM. And selective socialism selects winners and losers.

Many of the 1.6 million workers of the nation’s largest private employer have to augment their income or benefits with handouts. That is ridiculous. That is socialism. The wealth of the Walton heirs is equivalent to the wealth of the bottom 40 percent of the U.S. population!

And they couldn’t be wealthy without your tax dollars subsidizing their underemployed workers.

And then the government reacts to employers redistributing expenses to taxpayers with more socialism like the Affordable Care Act! It’s a mess.

Large or small employers can’t compete unless they, too, socialize a large portion of their employee expenses. The employee gets a paycheck and also qualifies for a government check because a sweatshop worker in Bangladesh makes 25 cents an hour sewing your underwear. And we’re OK with that?

If you are the biggest corporation in the world, a nonprofit religious organization or a small business, we the taxpayers can’t subsidize your workers anymore or house their male offspring acting out violently in our jails because you can’t pay family wages. It’s that simple. Or we will become a family-free nation because freedom isn’t free. Somebody always pays.

MIKE RENO

Post Falls