Lawrence O'Donnell is interviewing Michael Steele, chairman of the GOP, on TV and just asked him, in view of his opposition to the minimum wage, what the minimum wage actually was. His answer made it obvious that Steele had no idea what the minimum wage actually is (answer: $7.25 under federal law, $8.55 in Washington State). But he sure is against it. Any minimum wage.

I know other people who are against the minimum wage, and they at least have sensible arguments that involve the desire to help people who because of disability, for example, cannot justify being paid the minimum wage due to their low productivity. But I would have thought that someone in Steele's position would have bothered to find out exactly what he was against. Sadly not. To him it's a purely ideological argument. To me it's a question of how we ensure that greedy capitalists (like me) are forced to share a tiny portion of their gains with the people who create their wealth.

In the same interview, he was adamant that job creation came from small businesses, not government. But none of this explains why the Republican party wants to support large-wallet capitalism (unless, of course, you look at the campaign contributions that large corporations continue to make to electoral campaigns - and don't even get me started about the supreme court decision that says corporate campaign contributions are "free speech").

Interestingly enough, 80% of Americans believe that there should be a minimum wage. So don't try and tell me that the Republican party are interested in imposing the will of the people.  Unless, of course, the people happen to run large corporations and have absolutely no idea, when it comes to earnings and wealth, of the meaning of the word "enough". Apparently the Republican party is the party of Gordon Gekko*

* My favorite quote from Wall Street: "Gordon Gekko: The richest one percent of this country owns half our country's wealth, five trillion dollars. One third of that comes from hard work, two thirds comes from inheritance, interest on interest accumulating to widows and idiot sons and what I do, stock and real estate speculation. It's bullshit. You got ninety percent of the American public out there with little or no net worth. I create nothing. I own. We make the rules, pal. The news, war, peace, famine, upheaval, the price per paper clip. We pick that rabbit out of the hat while everybody sits out there wondering how the hell we did it. Now you're not naive enough to think we're living in a democracy, are you buddy? It's the free market. And you're a part of it. You've got that killer instinct. Stick around pal, I've still got a lot to teach you."