Charles Koch, the ultra conservative billionaire has discovered the Orwellian Bizarro World secret to getting poor people back on their feet again: Do away with the minimum wage!

I mean, why do we need it, right, isn’t the minimum wage one of the major roadblocks holding back the US economy from competing in a global marketplace? At least this is what this obscenely wealthy son-of-a-bitch (net worth $25 billion) wants people—gullible people, the kind of people who tend to believe anything if they hear it enough times—to think.

Yesterday, Koch told the Wichita Eagle why he’s against the minimum wage:

We want to do a better job of raising up the disadvantaged and the poorest in this country, rather than saying ‘Oh, we’re just fine now.’ We’re not saying that at all. What we’re saying is, we need to analyze all these additional policies, these subsidies, this cronyism, this avalanche of regulations, all these things that are creating a culture of dependency. And like permitting, to start a business, in many cities, to drive a taxicab, to become a hairdresser. Anything that people with limited capital can do to raise themselves up, they keep throwing obstacles in their way. And so we’ve got to clear those out. Or the minimum wage. Or anything that reduces the mobility of labor.

Reduces the mobility of labor? And here I always thought it was shit like like lack of affordable healthcare that reduced all that fucking mobility Koch seems to want to grease up for us with these, er, penetrating insights…

But it gets even better! As Rebecca Leber writes on Think Progress, Koch’s political foundation is starting to run an ad in Kansas that aims to “start a conversation” about America’s future:

The Kansas ad does not specifically mention the minimum wage, but it does claim that Americans earning $34,000 a year should count themselves as lucky, because that puts them in the top 1 percent of the world. “That is the power of economic freedom,” the ad concluded. Meanwhile, Charles and David Koch are the ones comfortably in the 1 percent, with a net worth of about 1 million times that figure.

Here’s the ad the Koch brothers hope will convince people who ride public transportation to fast food jobs to let folks like them kick the last slats of social support out from underneath them… for their own good and the good of the nation! The Charles Koch Foundation’s YouTube channel describes the one-minute spot like so:

How do we measure human happiness, well-being, and progress? There may be no more important question than how we strive for human progress and how we measure our path along the way. This video sparks a conversation about the conditions that can best create opportunities for earned success as well as compassion for the vulnerable. We hope you join the dialogue.

Many folks, as you might imagine, have joined the dialogue on YouTube, nearly all of it falling into the “fuck you and the vile propaganda your billions pay for, you loathsome piece of shit. When the revolution comes you’re gonna get yours,” etcetera, etcetera…

Won’t you join the dialogue, yourself and let Chuck know what you think?
 

 
Thank you, Steven Otero!