The minimum rage increase

Joe Biden and the Democrats are pushing for the $15 per hour minimum wage which Republicans are saying businesses can’t afford, even though the same Republicans seem just fine with CEOs making millions and millions of dollars while laying off employees after forcing them to give up their first-born male child to the cannibalistic pedophiles running the government.

OK, totally made up that cannibalistic pedophile thing (I mean who would be crazy enough to believe something like that?) but Republicans are fine with CEOs sucking companies dry like dehydrated vampires and then telling someone making $7.25 an hour the company just can’t afford to pay them a penny more or the whole thing will fall apart and we’ll wind up in a Mad Max-like society which would actually be kinda cool as long as I get one of those bitchin’ cars and a dingo to keep me company.

Unrelated information alert:

I looked up the dog in Mad Max 2 to make sure it actually was a dingo – I’m all about accurate information – and found out the dog was half-dingo and half-Blue Heeler, a breed used to herd cattle in Australia and the dog got the part after they auditioned over 100 dogs, so somewhere in Australia at least 99 disappointed dogs watched the movie and thought, “That should have been me” and called their agents to complain.

Except.

When the movie people found the dog it was scheduled to be put down and R.S.P.C.A requirements for the dog getting off Death Row included “de-sexing” the dog, so if he wanted the part the dog had to have his balls cut off, a procedure usually reserved for middle-aged men.

The movie director objected because that procedure wouldn’t exist in the post-apocalyptic society depicted in the movie, so I guess the dog was a method actor or the director just made up some crazy Hollywood-sounding shit to save the dog’s balls and if that was the case, “Good on ya, mate.”

They settled on a vasectomy and I’m not making any of this up.

Once they started filming it turned out the dog shit itself whenever he heard a loud engine noise and if you’ve seen Mad Max 2 there are a lot of loud engine noises so the solution was putting cotton in the dog’s ears.

Still not making any of this up, but I found this information on the internet and if you believe everything you read on the internet then those cannibalistic pedophiles running the government might be real too and if they are real we can only hope they get a part in the next Mad Max movie playing a dog and this time they should go ahead with the de-sexing option.

Where were we?

Right…a minimum wage increase

If you’re completely cynical – a destination we’ve been heading toward all our lives and is only achieved by fully enlightened people like Jesus, the Dalai Lama and Chuck Norris – you might think the Democrats are OK with the $15 an hour minimum wage because by the time it fully kicks in (which will be years from now) there won’t be any “employees” because we’ll all be part-time contractors in the gig economy which is called the gig economy because we’re going to get stuck like the slowest frog in the pond.

Another unrelated-information alert:

When I was a kid, my dad gigged some frogs and my mom subsequently fried up some frog legs and when I expressed doubt about the menu, I was told not to worry, “They taste just like chicken.”

Which is what everybody says whenever they’re trying to get you to eat some armadillo or alligator or whatever animal they hit on the freeway and then peeled out of their car’s grill two nights earlier. I’m pretty sure the first cannibal in history took a bite out of somebody’s thigh, looked around and informed his companions, “Hey, it tastes just like chicken.”

The correct response to the “it tastes just like chicken” claim is as follows: “Then why don’t we just have chicken.”

If the meats are so indistinguishable, how come nobody in the history of eating has ever taken a bite of chicken and said, “Tastes just like frog.”

So think about that for a while.

And now back to our regularly scheduled program

In the “gig” economy we’ll all do “pop-up” jobs – which is a thing I didn’t make up, although I wish I had – and once we finish whatever our current assignment is, we’ll get returned to some kind of Thunder Dome battleground (continuing our Mad Max theme) where we’ll fight over the chance to do some other kind of piece work that may or may not pay $15 an hour, but definitely won’t include medical insurance or a pension or an office with a restroom and company-supplied toilet paper.

The trickle-up theory

As you might recall Republicans had no problem with the “trickle-down” theory which went as follows: let the people at the top rape and pillage your company like Vikings on a meth binge and then you sit under their table and wait for a few crumbs to fall on the floor and that’s your share.

I tried to draw the “trickle-down theory” with Ronald Reagan pissing on a poor guy’s leg and while my editor wouldn’t let me put the cartoon in the paper, he did ask me to make six copies so he could show friends and family.

One of the problems with the “trickle-down” theory is rich people are…how shall I say this?...rich…and don’t need to immediately go out and spend whatever extra money you decide to give them.

On the other hand…

Poor people will immediately spend whatever extra money you give them and actually do a better job of spreading money around the economy. We’ve already tried giving most of the money to rich people and how’s that been working out for us?

At the end of 2017 I was laid off because they just couldn’t afford me anymore and meanwhile – according to Columbia Journalism Review – the CEO of McClatchy got a new contract in January of 2019 calling for $1 million in base pay, a $1 million dollar bonus and a $35,000 a month stipend which is supposed to be used for travel, housing, office and security expenses which might be necessary after McClatchy workers hear just how much their CEO is getting.   

And by CEO standards, the dude’s a bargain. In 2018 the CEOs in the country’s top 350 businesses were paid an average of $17.2 million.

It’s enough to make a man load his dingo in his car and hit the road…if only I could afford to pay for my dingo’s vasectomy.

http://kingfeatures.com/comics/editorial-cartoons-a-z/