Well, greetings, my friends, patriots, lovers of democracy, truth and justice, believers,

and peace, freedom and the American way, Tom Harbin here with you.

Here is a lot to get into today, and we will be going through all of it.

We're going to start in just a moment with Patrick Hedger and the minimum wage.

And I've got a whole nother take on that that I'll share with you after Patrick could I talk.

The fate and future of American democracy hanging on the minimum wage.

But to kick this thing off, Patrick Hedger is the vice president of policy at the taxpayer's protection alliance,

a conservative think tank prior to this, Patrick was a competitive enterprise institute center for technology and innovation,

and worked at freedom works.

The right wing group started by the Koch network back in the day who brought us all those protests against Obamacare.

Protectingtaxpayers.org is the website, and Patrick Hedger 18 is, or Patrick, 18 is Patrick's Twitter handle.

Patrick, it's been a long time since we've talked. I'm glad to have you back on the program.

It seems to me that the real complaint here that we're getting from giant corporations and even the congressional budget office,

which goes out of their way to point out how raising the minimum wage will decrease the rate at which wealth is being transferred from working people up to the top 1%.

In other words, it will benefit working people.

The real complaint is that these big companies that are paying crap wages are being subsidized with our tax dollars through Medicaid, food stamps, and housing support,

and they don't want to lose that subsidy.

What say you?

Yeah, well hey Tom, it's good to see you. It's been too long, and I appreciate you having me back on.

So what I would say is one, we're talking about lots of different types of businesses, right, and we're talking about a one-size-fits-all policy.

So we're not just talking about the minimum wage as applied to the mega corporations, we're talking about the minimum wage as also applied to the mom and pop shops.

And what I would say is that what we see, we see the companies that are lobbying for an increase in the minimum wage, they're actually some of the largest retailers and employers in the country.

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