Editor's note: Film Sessions is a weekly feature here on Media Madness in which I share, analyze and expand on a relevant video created by someone on the left wing of Youtube.
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As I promised readers last week, today we're going to take a look at a video from a new creator we haven't featured yet on Media Madness: JT Chapman, otherwise known in the world of lefty Youtube as "Second Thought."
Although I really don't know that much about Chapman, I first encountered his work a couple weeks back when my friend from Discord, TechnOkami, suggested I check out his January 15th, 2021 video about the fascist riot on Capitol Hill and what I (and others) regard as Trump's failed coup attempt. While I didn't ultimately end up featuring that video because the Renegade Cut presentation I did feature was more in line with the discussions I was already having about Americanized fascism with my audience, there were a couple of portions of Chapman's video I wished I could share in isolation:
- First up would be the part where our presenter names and shames elected Republican officials who either directly helped inspire the riots, or were actively on the ground participating in what quickly turned out to be a chud-backed "stupid coup" attempt. This is really just a simple rundown of elected fascists and fascist sympathizers that oddly enough, you won't find in any corporate media outlet in America, anytime soon.
- More importantly however, Chapman's Capitol Hill riot video also explicitly and directly explored the class character of the chud insurrectionists themselves and found, to the surprise of precisely zero Marxists on Earth, that they were not in fact working class, but rather business owners, affluent leisure class muppets and at very best, fine examples of the Volkish American petite-bourgeoisie - which is after all, the class right wing "populist" leaders really mean when they refer to "the people" on the hustings.
Ultimately it was this latter, class-focused angle that really attracted me to Chapman's work, and I didn't have to wait long for him to release another video that also revolved around class analysis; specifically this one - "The Minimum Wage Debate Explained."
In terms of general bells and whistles, Chapman's work actually has quite a lot to offer here and most of it is on display in this excellent and informative fourteen minute video. Although the "voiceover + video clips" style of Youtube essay has faded from fashion online, I'm old enough to genuinely prefer it to the modern "guy talking in front of a CGI logo" format that is more popular today. Chapman himself is clear, as well as articulate and his essays appear to be well organized and presented at pace based on the few I've watched; which is something I always appreciate as a viewer.
To open the video, our presenter notes that because the discussion surrounding the minimum wage is somewhat constantly in the American news these days, he's going to focus on some of the rarely if ever discussed underlying issues surrounding the raise the minimum wage debate itself. This then transitions into a very rough, four minute history of American labor conditions and the legally mandated minimum wage. The important takeaways here in my mind are that contrary to popular libertarian mythology, capitalists were making a pile of money from child labor and would not have ended it on their own (more on why this matters in a moment,) and that even by the standards of Depression-Era American labor, modern minimum wage workers are vastly underpaid. Accounting for merely inflation, the real minimum wage in the U.S. should be around thirteen bucks an hour and if you factor in productivity, which essentially represents your ability to meet your employer's increased demands, it should be roughly twenty-four dollars an hour. Although Chapman doesn't mention this until later, it is crucial to understand here that there is literally no place in America, where the federal minimum wage of seven dollars and twenty-five cents an hour, represents an actual living wage.
The next few minutes of the video go through a sort of point by point refutation of common business class, or bourgeoisie arguments against raising the minimum wage in America. Although I would strongly encourage you to actually watch the video, we'll take a brief look at each of them below:
- The argument that minimum wage is for students and retirees, and thus was never meant to be a living wage. Setting aside the fact that this is just straight up not true, Chapman presents a fairly decent moral argument that it is objectively wrong to pay even students and retirees literal poverty wages. What I really would have liked to see here however, is some acknowledgement that relying on students living with their parents, and elderly pensioners to make up their minimum wage workforce, is essentially allowing corporate America to have someone else subsidize their workforce. This would then include a discussion about how this subsidized workforce generates a tremendous amount of downward pressure on wages for labor throughout the entire working class as Second Thought later defines it; as was the case in our previous example regarding child labor, above. Finally, this would allow one to point out that the root problem here, the transformation of labor from something living, breathing people do, into a commodity that has to be traded at the lowest possible price, inextricably links all strata of labor class society; thus (as demonstrated by the very study of the 1966 Fair Labor Standards Act Chapman references multiple times in this video) an increase in the minimum wage is likely to result in increased wages for the entire labor class - an objectively good thing unless you're a member of the exploiter "owner" class.
- The argument that increasing the minimum wage will drastically raise the price of rental housing. This claim is at best highly speculative, and in all likelihood completely unrelated to the topic; as Chapman demonstrates by pointing out the 40% average rental price increase between 2010 and 2020, a period during which the minimum wage didn't rise at all.
- The argument that increasing the minimum wage will drastically raise the price of everyday goods and services; the most common example given is typically a McDonald's "Big Mac" sandwich. JT tears that one to shreds by pointing out McDonald's workers in Denmark make twenty-two dollars an hour (in addition to numerous benefits) and yet the price of a Big Mac in that country is a mere twenty-seven cents more than in America; leading our presenter to ask if twenty-seven cents is really that high a price to pay for human dignity and survival?
- The argument that raising the minimum wage will result in widespread business closures and economic devastation. On this point, Chapman's rebuttal is quite intricate and really has to be divided into two parts; corporate profits and the cherished American small business. In regards to the former, JT points out that same study of the 1966 Fair Labor Standards Act which indicates that there were literally no business closures as a result of increasing the minimum wage at that time, while also asking viewers to consider the enormous profits American corporations and the rich people who own them have racked up during the global coronavirus crisis. In other words, raising the minimum wage isn't going to cause corporations to become unprofitable and go out of business, but it might keep Jeff Bezos from buying an extra yacht this year; how tragic. As for small business, Chapman points out that if you're unable to turn a profit while paying your workers literally about a third of what the adjusted minimum wage really should be, then your business is making money by exploiting people and thus by the logic of your own free market, you probably shouldn't be in business. He then notes that one method of reducing the (largely hypothetical) burden minimum wage increases create on small business, is to automatically tie the minimum wage to inflation and productivity metrics, producing gradual increases over time - like they do in noted socialist country, um, France.
- Finally, Chapman notes the absurdity of the argument that raising the minimum wage is bad because it will cause unskilled workers to make more than other low-paid workers like say, teachers, in a country that has no problem spending a trillion or so dollars a year on its military. Ultimately JT concludes that literally all low-paid workers should receive better wages in America and again, given that whole reality that the minimum wage tracked to inflation and worker productivity objectively should be twenty-four dollars an hour - it's pretty hard to disagree with him.
Now to be clear, all of that does in fact make for an interesting explainer video in its own right; I mean it's certainly a damn sight better than anything they do over at Vox for example. Furthermore, I have to give JT credit for finding a way to put together a video primarily about debunking think tank talking points, without falling into the trap of only reacting to their bullsh*t, and not assailing the "common sense" ideas that underpin this disingenuous, pro-capitalist propaganda. Still, what ultimately makes this video stand out is not our presenter's ability to de-spin a relatively straightforward issue, but the fact that he also articulates a rudimentary vision of American class struggle through the lens of the federal minimum wage. Touching on American hyper-competitiveness, exploitation, and social Darwinism, the piece goes well beyond the minimum wage debate and asks important questions about how we organize work in America, and why, or perhaps rather - for whom? The language is a little off, and one is forced to wonder if JT understands that literally all wage labor under capitalism is exploitation, but in the final analysis, this essay is firmly rooted in basic Marxist ideas about labor and wages, in a way you aren't going to find from more mainstream news outlets.
All in all, I'd have to describe this video as excellent and Second Thought himself, as a lefty Youtube creator worth watching; I know I subscribed about halfway through the presentation. You can check it out by clicking the header, or watching the embedded video itself, below:
The Minimum Wage Debate Explained
Additional Resources
Second Thought Youtube Channel
If Worker Pay Kept Pace With Productivity: $24/hr Minimum Wage
Full-time min wage workers can't afford 2-bedroom rental anywhere in US
$7.25 an hour is not a living wage
It Was Always Supposed To Be A Living Wage
Study shows taxpayers are subsidizing “starvation wages” at McDonald's, Walmart
Raising the Minimum Wage Would Boost Recovery and Reduce Subsidization
Raising the federal minimum wage to $15 Would Lift Pay for 40 Million
The affordable housing crisis, explained
McDonald’s Workers in Denmark Pity Us
Minimum Wages and Racial Inequality
This is why raising the minimum wage can help cities to thrive
Minimum wage increases aren’t a job killer
Profits are soaring for large retailers but frontline workers barely earn more
The Rich Got Richer During COVID-19
The gig economy is being fueled by exploitation, not innovation
Research Shows Minimum Wage Increases Do Not Cause Job Loss
America’s Defense Budget Is Bigger Than You Think
Marx on exploitation: an ABC for an unequal world
A Functional Class Framework for Modern Western Leftists
nina illingworth
Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus. Please help me fight corporate censorship by sharing my articles with your friends online!
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