Whoopi's Wealth and You: A Tale of Two Worlds

Whoopi Goldberg made what can only be construed as a remarkable comment on The View recently, that she works for a living and empathizes with the financial struggles Americans have faced due to inflation over the past 3 1/2 years under Biden.

While it's true she is a working individual, and her job is indeed a paid position, it's rather misleading to imply that she experiences financial hardship in the same way as the average American.

Understandably, she's facing significant backlash for her comments. This Thanksgiving many will be asking, "Are you serious?" around dinner tables across the country. She's honestly comparing herself to everyday Americans with a median income of $80,020 a year?

Whoopi Goldberg earns an annual salary of $8 million for her appearances on The View alone. On top of that, she likely receives substantial income from her extensive work in TV shows, movies, and comedy albums over the years. Her estimated net worth is approximately $60 million.

She's hardly on her way to rags and a shed in the woods hunting deer for food.

Having a political stance is one thing, and understanding the dynamics and impacts of inflation is another. You don't need to be poor to grasp how inflation affects one's financial quality of life. However, to sit there with a straight face and claim to share the same struggles as your audience is quite insulting.

Her comment serves as yet another reminder of how disconnected celebrities can be from reality. It's important to remember this when they comment on issues that affect the rest of us. They don't live in our world, see things through the same lens, or experience life as we do.

It's not to say they are not people, of course. But someone like Whoopi Goldberg isn't facing the tough choices at the grocery store that many Americans do. She's merely complaining about the increased costs, not making the same sacrifices as a working mom with a family of four to feed on a limited budget.

How can she sit there earning 100 times what her audience does and be taken seriously trying to argue that she's just like you? In the most basic of ways, it simply lacks credibility.

Granted, it's Whoopi Goldberg, who is known for making controversial remarks rather frequently. However, this does not entitle her to a free pass. The significant disparity between the lives of celebrities and average Americans is evident—do they not understand this? Have they become so far removed from their past lives that they have forgotten what it's like for everyone else?

It's perfectly fine to empathize with the financial hardships of others and to voice concerns. However, comparing their own experiences to those of average Americans only highlights that they lack the same perspective to draw upon.

Personally, I think Whoopi Goldberg should apologize to her audience. She once faced financial hardships and was a regular person. It would be more sincere for her to reflect on those experiences and share that story honestly. It would be much more genuine for her to acknowledge that these aren't her struggles today but that she remembers and understands what it's like to make tough decisions at the grocery store. Instead of claiming she's just like us, she should reflect on how fortunate she is to be in a different place.

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© 2024 Jim Bauer 

They're Crappy Jobs, But Someone Has to Do Them

The push has been on of course, for some time, to hike the minimum wage, and in many states, they've done exactly that. The most recent one in California, where the state's minimum wage was raised to $20 an hour, has made quite a lot of news— for a variety of reasons, and not all of it good.

Most states will have their minimum wages set at around $15 an hour, with my own state, Illinois, being at that rate by next year.

Honestly, I come from a couple of sides on this idea. As most things tend to be, it's a more complex issue than most people realize. It's easy for me to blanketly say, "I am opposed," and generally I am. Because it is a complex issue.

There's more to consider than just the quality of life for the employees who are impacted by lower wages. Because there's one underlying thought here. Does a higher wage actually have a positive effect on the quality of life for the employees?

I contend that it doesn't, because more often than not, financial woes are the result of personal choices and lack of financial education than it is the result of how much one makes. In order to improve the quality of life for these people, you have to first change the habits that are the root of their problems. 

But of course, no one is going to do that. It's much easier to just hand someone a few more bucks and wash your hands of any future dirt.

The biggest consideration is where the money comes from. Because money doesn't grow on trees and it has to come from somewhere, and unfortunately, the pockets of the businesses aren't as deep as many people tend to think they are.

It's mostly going to come from consumers. Or, in some cases, it's going to come from businesses pulling back on their labor. Either they will find more ways to automate and reduce staffing, or they'll close locations altogether to make up the difference.

At the same time, I do fully recognize that the difference between the wages earned, and basic needs being met have to come from somewhere as well.

Taxpayers will have to pony up on that one.

It used to be that jobs like retail and fast food were secondary jobs or entry level jobs, or just simply jobs that older people used to supplement their retirements. They were never intended to be careers. I think they probably still shouldn't be.

That being said, there is some truth to the idea that these jobs now make up a large number of all jobs, and so it becomes a question of whether or not we should consider these occupations similarly to other ones. 

Between Walmart, McDonald's, Burger King, and Target, they employ around 2.6 million people combined, in the United States. But consider that in the entire restaurant industry in the U.S., 12.5 million people hold these kinds of jobs. 9.8 million people work in retail.

The labor participation rate as of April of 2024 was roughly 62.7%, meaning that fast food and retail jobs account for around 11% of the total workforce.

But there are many other types of jobs such as secretarial work, certain manufacturing jobs and receptionists and call center workers who are also paid close to, or slightly higher than, these state minimum wages. So, the actual number of employees in this wage range are actually representative of a much higher percentage of the total participating workforce.

A full-time worker at these wages will earn somewhere around $31,200 a year, which is $28,028 below the average per worker income of $59,228. Median household income is roughly $78,238, meaning a household with two workers in fast food or retail would pull in roughly $62,400 or $15,800 less than other average households per year.

Raising the minimum wage even higher than $15 could help to at least close the gaps. But again, at what cost? Right now the average cost of living in the U.S. is just under $70,000 a year. It can be presumed that higher wages would lead to higher costs, and thus, closing the gap would be a moot point because the cost of living would raise proportionate to the cost of the higher wages.

So, what do you do? Frankly it becomes sort of a damned if you do, damned if you don't kind of a situation.

I think the emphasis should be on financial education so that any working American is afforded not just an opportunity to earn a wage, or even a livable one, but can actually grow financially. Because it goes back to a saying I cite often, that it doesn't matter as much how much you make as it matters what you do with what you make.

While I am not for arbitrarily raising wages, I do take into consideration that just because these jobs require very little in terms of actual skills, they are still jobs we need to be able to fill. We have to have these workers if we want our lattes and doughnuts and Whoppers—or if we want to have more than two or three lanes open at checkouts.

Someone has to do these jobs, and perhaps working in them should not be a sort of punishment.

But going back around full circle, we also cannot expect the money to simply materialize out of thin air. We have to consider the actual balance sheets of the businesses impacted by paying the higher wages. If they can't function, or go under, no one benefits. Not the workers, and certainly not the consumers who want to be able to patronize these businesses.

When we consider wages, we have to be cognitive of all of the impacts of it. On workers. On consumers. On the businesses. And on the taxpayers. Because when we raise wages, it impacts everyone.

Everyone deserves a good quality of life if they are putting in the work. But you can't take from Peter to pay Paul in order to do it. You can't just pick a number off the top of your head and say, "Okay, we'll pay that." And you also cannot assume that the wage is the only problem to solve.

Because again, it's complicated.

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© 2024 Jim Bauer