Yesterday, on the GOP debate stage, there were eight highly successful people. We tend to forget about this, deride them as clowns, ridicule their comments, and overall think we know better than any of them.
Two of them were business people (Trump, Fiorina), three of them senators (Rubio, Cruz, Paul), two of them medical doctors (Carson, Paul) and two of them governors, one former, one current (Bush, Kasich).
Most of them are also very rich:
- Trump – $4,000 million
- Fiorina – $59 million
- Bush – $22 million
- Carson – $10 million
- Cruz – $3 million
- Kasich – $2.5 million
- Paul – $1.3 million
- Rubio – $0.4 million
These people have obviously done very well for themselves. By any standards, position or net worth, they are considered extremely successful. Very few people ever become governor or U.S. senator. Or multi-millionaire.
Seven out of the eight people on that stage were millionaires, one of them a billionaire.
Yet, all of them agreed that the minimum wage should not be raised. On national TV. In front of 50 million people living on minimum wage in this country.
Now in the spirit of full disclosure, I also do not believe that the minimum wage should be raised. I have voiced my arguments in these pages before. Here is one post, and there are many others if you type “minimum wage” into the search box above.
But, fortunately for me, I am not standing on a stage on national TV as a millionaire, making this argument. Do these people really expect to get elected? Do they really think that the poor believe that they know what it feels like to live paycheck to paycheck? Or welfare check to welfare check?
It looked pretty awkward to me to have a billionaire stand on stage saying that raising the minimum wage can’t be done.
Very awkward.