In the free-market utopia imagined by the Ayn Rand acolytes
in the Republican party, everyone is paid what he or she deserves
according to his or her value. There’s no need for government to step in
and regulate businesses because the market will punish anyone who
engages in unfair or destructive practices.
Then there’s the real world.
A New York Times investigation into working conditions in NYC-area nail salons exposed horrific conditions for the mostly immigrant women who do cheap manicures and pedicures.
They’re paid little to nothing. What meager wages they get from salon owners are often docked for minor infractions. Minimum wage? Overtime? These basic rights most Americans take for granted are as fantastical to salon employees as Narnia.
Most of the women interviewed by the Times were undocumented and spoke little English, meaning they don’t have access to the resources to improve their working conditions or to demand the pay they deserve.
The salon’s customers aren’t going to police the wages of the women doing their nails. The only hope these workers have is that the government steps in and forces salons to pay their workers fair and legal wages.
Republicans, especially the Rand Paul-libertarian wing of the party, would have you believe government regulation of business is a universal evil. They’d like to forget the years before we had child labor laws, weekends, and guaranteed overtime pay.
They’d like you to ignore the woman at the end of your pedicure chair and continue to assume that all business owners do what’s right. They’d like to pretend that workers aren’t often desperate enough to take any work they can get, even if it means working ungodly hours and working in deplorable conditions.
But the real world doesn’t work the way they want. Business owners exploit workers to maximize profit. They always have. They always will. And without regulation and enforcement, that GOP libertarian utopia is a very, very ugly place.
Then there’s the real world.
A New York Times investigation into working conditions in NYC-area nail salons exposed horrific conditions for the mostly immigrant women who do cheap manicures and pedicures.
They’re paid little to nothing. What meager wages they get from salon owners are often docked for minor infractions. Minimum wage? Overtime? These basic rights most Americans take for granted are as fantastical to salon employees as Narnia.
The salon’s customers aren’t going to police the wages of the women doing their nails. The only hope these workers have is that the government steps in and forces salons to pay their workers fair and legal wages.
Republicans, especially the Rand Paul-libertarian wing of the party, would have you believe government regulation of business is a universal evil. They’d like to forget the years before we had child labor laws, weekends, and guaranteed overtime pay.
They’d like you to ignore the woman at the end of your pedicure chair and continue to assume that all business owners do what’s right. They’d like to pretend that workers aren’t often desperate enough to take any work they can get, even if it means working ungodly hours and working in deplorable conditions.
But the real world doesn’t work the way they want. Business owners exploit workers to maximize profit. They always have. They always will. And without regulation and enforcement, that GOP libertarian utopia is a very, very ugly place.
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