Today, employees at your local fast food establishment are going on strike to demand the right to unionize and to be paid something substantially more than the minimum wage. Because, Neil Cavuto, what was yesterday's summer job to support a bubble gum habit has become today's full-time job to support a family. Or, as The New Yorker's James Surowiecki put it: “Forty years ago, there was no expectation that fast-food or discount-retail jobs would provide a living wage, because these were not jobs that, in the main, adult heads of household did. Today, low-wage workers provide forty-six per cent of their family's income.”

Today, then, would be a good time to note both John Oliver on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report had pretty hilarious takes on the issue recently, with Colbert bringing on Service Employees International Union President Mary Kay Henry to discuss the strike. Of course, he asked all sorts of pressing questions (“But why should this corporation have to pay these people more than minimum wage? Isn't it up to these people to pull themselves up by their own fry baskets?”). The clip, after the jump.

The Colbert Report
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