where can i get my hands on some class warfare?

by Steven Doss

Published: February 28, 2008

270 Million. That is the amount of the Georgia Powerball Lottery. Millions of people each month spend their hard earned money on tiny slivers of paper just for a tiny sliver of hope that they will become instantly wealthy. Now, who do you think is more likely to purchase tickets, a wealthy industrialist who uses hundred dollar bills as toilet paper, or a slack-jawed Alabamian that is most likely going to be seen on television because the storm “sounded like a freight train?” Exactly. Lotteries are one of the many aspects of our society that feeds off the poor.

It seems that our little country has a tendency to pray on the weakest of our society. As I have said earlier, higher education is incredibly expensive. Medicine and health care are only affordable if one has health insurance, and last I checked, hourly waged people don’t get many benefits. So what do we do so that people do not have to resort to grasping on to the off chance that they can pick 5 numbers really well? For starters, a decent living wage would be nice for people. I must applaud congress for raising the minimum wage, but they are taking their sweet time in actually bringing it to fruition. In the time it is taking for us to raise the minimum wage, prices are rising. If Congress waits much longer, inflation will begin to eat away at the impact of the “raise.”

But seriously, even if the increase were to take effect tomorrow, we are talking about adding $.60 to the hourly rate of society’s lowest paid workers; bringing it from the current rate of $5.15 an hour to $5.85 an hour. Even at $5.85, it’s still a “sorry you have a family” wage. It’s still a “hope you don’t get sick, because if you do, you’re royally screwed” wage. The only way to alleviate the financial burden placed on the minimum wage earner is to have congress make the wage hike instant and real. At $5.85 an hour on a 40-hour work week, the worker is bringing home $936 pre-tax dollars a month. $936 a month won’t get you a studio apartment in most major cities. In fact, the only place $936 a month can even be considered a “subsistence wage” is in the backwoods of Kentucky.

But, leave it to our Congress to think that people really don’t need something extra in their paycheck when they are “already” making $5.15 an hour. Contrast that with a Congressional salary of $169,000 and you can easily understand why it’s hard for our public servants to interrupt their paid-for-by-lobbyists lunch to vote the raise into law. After all, if they don’t have a steady stream of contributors to their campaigns how will they be able to remain in office and defend the middle and lower classes from exploitation?

In closing, I leave you with the immortal words of Kent Brockman: “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, democracy just doesn’t work.”

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