http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/11294-minimum-wage-raise-is-the-least-we-can-do-to-civilize-america
The above article brings a vapid response in some, mindless arguments based not on facts but false rhetoric espoused by those who would keep those of America with the most to lose trapped in a nightmare. Some of us watched or read what was spouted at the Republican National Convention last week. Some of us are Republicans and embrace every utterance from their lips as gospel truth. Who better to spew gospel truth after all than those who claim to be blessed in that regard with the keeping of our spirituality? But I digress…
I have read so many responses from women all over America this last week to Ann Romney’s address. Having caught clips of it and read transcripts of it now, I am glad I did not watch it. I am one of those women she was comparing herself to, saying we were all the same. I can honestly say she is full of shit. She and I are not even in the same universe!
She talked of being poor in college. Huh, she got to go to college! I only dreamed about going to college. She talked about how when times got tough for her and Mitt in college they had to sell investments to keep going. What? At my age I have never had any free money to think about even investing in anything except my continued survival paycheck to paycheck. Must have been nice to be young 20 somethings and have investments to sell!
Please don’t tell me Ann how hard you had it as a parent. Well, I guess figuring out which nannies and domestic staff to hire could be tough. Did you, Ann, have the onerous chore of deciding cloth or disposable diapers with your children? The only choice I had was cloth, washed in a machine that I had to start spinning by hand and hung on the clothes line to dry, as were the rest of our clothing. Disposable diapers were an expensive luxury only indulged in for trips longer than 30 minutes. I would imagine your nannies were very good about keeping your children clean and dry so diaper rash was nothing you ever had to worry about. As I am sure your domestic staff ensured you never had to worry about cleaning house with a sick baby in your arms. Come to think on it, you probably didn’t have many, or any, sleepless nights due to that either. How amazing it must have been to have nannies and domestic staff! I had to fill all those positions myself!
She talked about how her husband worked so hard to become as well off as he is now. For some reason, given his affluent upbringing, I don’t think he even had to worry about chipping an already ragged nail because he couldn’t afford a mani/pedi. While the young men from regular working class families had no choice in the matter of going to Vietnam, Mitt spent that time in France, as a missionary. Oh I am sure it was difficult doing all those missionary things. Probably took a lot of his time to carouse around and have fun away from him. But these things happen when your daddy has money to ensure your safety with. Sometimes you gotta suck it up and pretend to do the job you were supposedly sent there to do.
And no Ann, we were not all destined to the same things in life, sharing the same lot in life. You, my dear delusional pampered woman, have never, ever in your life had to worry whether there would be enough money left over after the absolute necessary bills were paid to buy your children nutritious food. You, Ann, never had to sit up through the night with a sick baby screaming their head off and try to figure out where you can get the money the next morning to take them to the doctor and buy meds with. You, Ann, never worked a minimum wage job that was soul crushing, thankless, and you were treated like crap by those you worked for. Much less TWO of those soul crushing, thankless minimum wage jobs at the same time just to make ends halfway meet. No Ann, your educated, privileged upbringing put you in a very small class of women that are in no way what so ever even similar to the vast majority of American women. Go back to your universe and shut the fuck up!
Now, regarding the link above, I can count on one hand, and not use all those fingers, the number of jobs I have had in my life that paid more than minimum wage. Please keep in mind that during many of those years, I held TWO minimum wage jobs, just to make ends half way meet. When I first started my working life, at the tender age of 16, minimum wage was less than $3 an hour. Absorb that for a few minutes. $3 an hour, in today’s economy won’t even pay for a cup of Starbuck’s coffee. Not that I have ever had a cup of Starbuck’s coffee but I do know how much it costs! $3 bucks an hour for three hours a day, fixing food in a nursing home, distributing those meals and cleaning up, four days a week. $60 a week. Woohoo, some of you might say, pretty good for a 16 year old. Did I buy a car as so many 16 year olds want? No. I actually kept very little of that for myself. My dad was laid off and I gave my money to him to help pay bills and buy food with.
At 18 I was married and expecting my first child. My husband at that time worked hard because he felt a mother’s place was at home with the children. But don’t think it was easy street. Far from it! Some years we barely got by on $6000 a year with two children! It was hard but we did it. In some ways I worked harder during that period of my life than any other. We bought a pickup (used thank you) and a house (an older home that needed TLC thank you) during those years. But by the time my second child was born, we knew I was going to have to get a job. He was a little over a year old when I went back to work, at a minimum wage job in a nursing facility as an aide. Minimum wage by that time had been raised to $3.25 an hour. Over the course of the next twelve years, that seemed to be my lot in life, working as an aide, cleaning shit and taking lots of shit from everyone in those jobs, for minimum wage.
I remember distinctly when minimum wage finally reached $7.25 an hour. I finally felt I would have some breathing room. But I was wrong. The cost of living continued to increase every year since then while the wage stayed the same. At the time it finally reached $7.25 you could still get a gallon of milk for $2 or less, three loaves of bread for a dollar in most cases, I have a coffee can from that time that tells me I paid $1.89 for a one pound can of Folgers. Rents in the area where I lived were still in the $200 to $250 a month range for a decent house and you could still get a decent used car in the $3000 range. Doctors offices didn’t require a credit check to get in their doors and would still see you if you had no insurance.
Today I pay $4 for a gallon of milk, $1.00 for one loaf of store brand bread, $5 or more for a one pound can of store brand coffee (Oh how I miss the smooth taste of Folgers!). A decent house where I am at now will cost you $400 a month and up and a decent used car can set you back 10 grand! And yet minimum wage is still only $7.25 an hour. Did you know that $7.25 an hour, with a 40 hour week will make you more than the cut off for food stamps? And in most cases it is more than the cut off for Medicaid. Regardless of how many children you have. It may even put you beyond the threshold to get assistance with housing. That is why there are so many single and dual parent families out there working two or more minimum wage jobs. They don’t even think about buying a house and drive old clunkers that should have been retired a decade ago. They can only dream of having enough money to have health insurance.
Those trapped in the minimum wage jobs shouldn’t have to choose between housing and healthcare, utilities or food, transportation that is dependable or having to work minimum wage jobs in walking distance from their homes because they can’t afford a car. Remember the French Revolution? That all came about because the 1%, the royalty, were spending tons of money for frivolous crap while ignoring the needs of the people. The people had no food, no jobs, their children were starving to death. It has been debated whether Marie Antoinette really said “Let them eat cake!” or not, but either way, she ate very well! Think about that for a few minutes, absorb the implications of this analogy. Because it can, and eventually will, happen here in our own country…again.
It doesn’t matter if you are a staunch Republican, a determined Democrat, or in my case, just an independent thinker, the policies being spouted and bandied about right now have no consideration in them for raising minimum wage. As of right now, our government is going to require each and every individual to obtain health insurance before a specified time or pay a ‘penalty tax’. For a person earning minimum wage, they can not afford to get insurance if their employer doesn’t have a plan that is affordable. No caps or controls were set in place on the insurance companies as to the price they can charge for premiums. An example, for me, with several pre-existing conditions, two years ago the only company with a plan that would cover my conditions from day one wanted $800 a month. As of three weeks ago that same plan is now $1200 a month for me. Just me! I don’t have it. Who the hell in the middle and lower classes can afford that!
If we want to see any kind of improvements in the lives of the working class poor in this country, minimum wage has got to be raised and continue to rise with the rising costs of inflation. Now more than ever with the prices of foods, gasoline and housing sky rocketing. Or eventually those bearing the brunt of the labor force in our country will rise up. And it will not be pretty…
