“The poor are less often dismissed, I hope, from our conscience today by being branded as inferior and incompetent… The dignity of the individual will flourish when the decisions concerning his life are in his own hands, when he has the assurance that his income is stable and certain, and when he knows that he has the means to seek self-improvement.” — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the need for a guaranteed annual income, Aug. 16, 1967

“Are we willing to say as a society, that someone with zero skills but who is willing to work 40 hours at something—a plantation worker comes to mind—is entitled to be paid enough to make ends meet here? If so, then why did many of us bust our butts trying to acquire marketable skills?” — President of the Tax Foundation of Hawaiʻi Tom Yamachika in a Maui News column, Jan. 18, 2020

If there’s one thing you can almost admire about Tom Yamachika, it’s his audacity to say the quiet part loud no matter how depraved. Implying that imported plantation workers deserved the oppressive working conditions they endured, and questioning workers’ rights to dignified lives the weekend before Martin Luther King Jr. Day—well, that takes… a special kind of person.

For all his elitist hand-wringing and grasping arguments, though, there is one thing about Yamachika’s Jan. 18 column “What really is a minimum wage?” that I am  thankful for: the clear articulation of a disregard and disdain for the poor which appears at all levels of government. It seems we are no longer engaged in the War on Poverty envisioned by President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society.

Rather, it’s War on the Poor.

Read more.