We turned on Mickelson's show in the living room and listened together. He spoke of "scumbag fill-in-the-blank big box stores" who pay their workers low wages supplemented by the safety net provided by taxpayers who provide the food stamps, Medicaid, subsidized housing, and other benefits that amounted to $2.1 billion a year for Walmart workers alone several years ago.She was quite surprised about his position. Mickelson has been broadcasting in Iowa for well over twenty years. He has a reputation for being a strong social conservative. I called into his show once back in 2002 to advocate for gay parents. The Iowa legislature was working hard that year to ban gay and lesbian individuals and couples from foster parenting and from adopting children. Mickelson was in favor of this ban. It was quite the stressful year, but we managed to get the bill killed.
He said if we raised the minimum wage to $12.50 an hour, a family living wage, illegals would stop coming over the border to take jobs paying next to nothing or nothing in the case of wage-stealing employers (don't think it doesn't happen, because it does). A higher minimum wage would incentivize people to work instead of staying on the dole, and taxpayers wouldn't be subsidizing "scumbag corporations" who depend on taxpayers to cover for them.
But this is standard for his show. Lots of anti-gay opinions. Lots of other typical conservative topics also, but it was the anti-gay stuff that really got the audience excited and my blood pressure boiling. To be honest, I haven't listened to his show since around the time I called into his program. I'd much rather listen to Iowa Public Radio or KCJJ or Sirius XM or my iPod. So that's what I do.
But I'm digressing...
Maria was surprised by Mickelson's position on raising the minimum wage, but it actually doesn't surprise me because I've heard him talk about living wages on his radio program in the past and it's one of the few things that I strongly agree with him about.
Think about it. We have chipped away at living wages in this state and in the larger country for decades now. We eliminate job categories and replace them with new job categories employed by new workers at lower wages. What this has accomplished is a steadily eroded working class population who struggle to support their families with one full-time career. We have made it so that mothers (or fathers, for that matter) cannot become stay-at-home parents/homemakers because their families require two working parents in order to cover the basics. And, most recently, we have created a society of temporary employees who float between multiple part-time positions without the ability to save for the future and to develop any sense of career stability.
In the past, Mickelson lamented to erosion of wages at meat packing plants, which led to American workers leaving to find higher wages in order to support their families and the import of illegal immigrants who are willing to work for lower wages and afraid to complain about working conditions for fear of retaliation and deportation.
Of course, this wage stagnation has spread. Look at how the universities and communities colleges have essentially corporatized themselves and created their own industry of temporary semester-by-semester employees (i..e., adjunct professors) who don't know if they'll have classes to teach next semester and who most likely don't have any health benefits.
And don't get me started on what Iowa's legislature is doing with our state's mental health system and its employees...
The truth is that American industry cannot continue to exist with ever-stagnating wages and ever-increasing service and product costs. If wages continue to hover between $7.25-$9.50 per hour while housing, utility, food, and gasoline costs (among other basics) continue to increase, who do they think are going to buy their products (i.e., clothing, electronics, books, cars, etc.)?
So good for Jan Mickelson. I hope that your listeners absorbed your position on this topic and will push our legislature to work a little hard for Iowa's employees and a little less for Iowa's corporate industries.