The man described as the
Koch brothers' "grand strategist" at the Koch brothers' own secret donor
gathering has some strong feelings about the minimum wage. Strong as in
he thinks raising the minimum wage would lead to fascism.Richard Fink, an executive vice president of Koch Industries, based
his case that the minimum wage leads to fascism on the discredited
claim that raising the minimum wage would cost 500,000 jobs. Economic
consensus, based on dozens of studies of actual real-life cases
comparing states, cities, or counties with higher minimum wage with
their neighbors with lower minimum wage, is that raising the wage does
not hurt job growth. And you don't have to look far to find recent
examples of strong job growth in places that raised the minimum wage. So
Fink's argument starts in a problematic place. But it gets a whole lot
more problematic really fast:
He continued, "We're taking these
500,000 people that would've had a job, and putting them unemployed,
making dependence part of government programs, and destroying their
opportunity for earned success. And so we see this is a very big part of
recruitment in Germany in the '20s."
"If you look at the Third --
the rise and fall of the Third Reich, you can see that," Fink said. "And
what happens is a fascist comes in and offers them an opportunity,
finds the victim -- jews or the West -- and offers them meaning for
their life, OK?"
Fink cited the historical examples of Nazi
Germany and communist Russia and China to segue to terrorism. "This is
not just in Germany. It's in Russia, in Lenin, and Stalin Russia, and
then Mao," said Fink. "This is the recruitment ground for fascism, and
it's not just historical. It's what goes on today in the -- in the
suicide bomber recruitment."
Not just Hitler, but also Lenin,
Stalin, Mao, and suicide bombers. He couldn't come up with any other
historical boogeymen? Maybe he could blame the American Civil War on
efforts to raise the minimum wage for enslaved people!
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