Think what one will about Starbucks. Maybe they are crazed left coast communists, but they brew pretty good coffee. Think what one will about the people who work at Starbucks, but they are people and, from what I have seen, they do work. (If you’re not into thinking at all, then go somewhere else, please).

As-is, right now employees in 25 semi-unionized states are on strike for a variety of reasons. One of them, probably the most important is better pay. I took the following screen-grab from Indeed:

What’s there to complain about, right? Baristas on average earn 3 cents less than the vaunted $15(!) minimum wage. Look at the supervisors and managers. What’s the problem? Well, the problem is that none of these sampled salaries, not even the $132,546 for a systems analyst, are even half of what the average salary would be, today, if salaries had kept pace with financialized inflation the past 70 years. $15 per hour is only 40% of the $37.50 that minimum wage should be. That’s the problem, so far as the working people are concerned.

The analyst could buy the average new house so long as he toted a hefty mortgage payment. On $14.97, it’s out of the question. (Non-thinkers, now and here isn’t appropriate. Shut up and go away). $15 only buys 4 gallons of gas, and it would take nearly a year and a half at that rate to buy the average new car. At $15 per hour, one can afford a good apartment and basic utilities, and not much else. One could alternatively eat and dress well, perhaps even with a new car payment, but one couldn’t live indoors in most markets. This is a problem. Forget family life. In fact, forget the family. This is a huge problem.

Part of the problem that prevents the obvious solution is that there isn’t enough fake money floating around to give people the necessary raises so they can live. It’s not entirely Starbucks’s problem; they really cannot afford to help in any meaningful way. The money is not there. And, ginning up that money, as is done for governments and corporations and other criminal entities, would only jack the prices of the things life requires even higher. It’s a losing game. It’s a lost game. A huge problem.

How? Why? When? This is the result of decades of usury eating away at the very value of money, the very definition of money itself. Fake, nonexistent bad money has driven out – past tense – good money. All real wealth has been effectively transferred into the hands of wicked, worthless thieves and murderers. The people, think what one will of them – knowing one is one of them, are left with nothing. This is a satanic problem.

If ropes grew on trees, we’d have a ready solution.