Essential Workers

History Against the Grain

Still sleepy from their socially distanced tryptophan turkey fiesta, the Saucy Boys awaken in Episode 31 to the lies, damn lies, and sketchy statistics of capitalism’s pandemic chicanery. Essential workers may keep us fed in the time of COVID, but cold hearted capitalism won’t budge a federal minimum wage off its 2007 level of $7.50/hour. Starvation wages for essential workers. What gives? Is it really the iron law of wages, or just patriarchy, racism, and lowdown greed once again gaming a system that’s been ripping people off since the Pilgrim’s hustled their first free dinner from their Wampanoag hosts? If colonial New England is really the cradle of white America’s liberty, maybe that’s because those Puritans had a lot of free time and plenty to eat thanks to the uncompensated essential workers of their day: the enslaved African men and women who kept their Christian hearts and funny hats well provided for in hearth and home. Listen in as we turn the great American origins myth on its head and watch all the ill gotten coin drop from the pockets of the pilferers. Don’t touch that filthy lucre friends, unless you have plenty of hand sanitizer, cause it will make you sick. Help is on the way with another feisty episode of History Against the Grain.