Cyndi Lauper knew what she was talking about in her 1984 song “Money Changes Everything.”
However, with the elections only four days away, it doesn’t seem that money is going to change anything.
A number of issues are being heavily debated this campaign season, but I would have to say that little heed is being given to what I would consider one of the most important issues in present politics – minimum wage.
People have talked about raising the minimum wage to upwards of $7. Those people are called Democrats, the party that occasionally forgets its members are shifting to the right and tries to make movements to help the little people. That idea has been shot down several times, and it will continue to be shot down.
I am a minimum-wage worker. I get paid the absolute minimum of $5.15 an hour as work-study remuneration for my work on the Baker Orange. I also work at Wheat State Pizza, where I make $6.25 an hour, which I would say is a decent wage among jobs in the food industry in modern America.
Needless to say, I care about the minimum wage. For someone in my age group and for many people who work in low-end jobs, I’d say the compensation for labor required by the federal government should be a top priority.
I said it should be a top priority – I didn’t say it should be raised, though I do believe it should be. That is my own opinion, and I understand that various groups have different reasoning for differing opinions on the matter.
The overall problem is not solely the lack of compensation for basic labor. This is simply indicative of a much larger problem brewing within American society. An enormous gap is growing between America’s upper class and lower class.
There used to be a day when conversation focused on how to help the poor. I now hear news features about how to help the middle class. Didn’t the middle class used to be the most prosperous group in American society? If the middle class can barely make it through, what’s happening to the even lower classes?
An Oct. 16 article in the Christian Science Monitor said a person working for the federal minimum wage 40 hours a week for 52 weeks a year earns $10,712, which is about $6,000 less than the poverty line.
I’ve heard an array of arguments about why it would be harmful to our economy to raise minimum wage. People say if wages are raised, prices will be too. I don’t know if anyone has ever noticed, but there’s this little thing called inflation, and prices are rising anyway.
When the minimum wage was last changed nine years ago, I vaguely remember buying things for quite a bit less. Since then, I remember buying gas for about 86 cents per gallon. That’s an expense that wouldn’t empty my wallet nearly as quickly if I actually had something coming into my wallet other than credit card receipts.
What about small business? That is the next question. If a small business can’t cover $2 per employee per hour, the owners might have other problems besides minimum wage. With a wage increase, it is to be expected that prices will increase. However, the raised prices won’t be so high that the spending power of a lower-income worker won’t go up.
Essentially, this is a classic example of “upper-class citizens” fighting to keep lower classes from gaining power. They want that gap to keep widening, and a higher minimum wage will mean their pockets won’t get quite as fat.
So what issues are we using to divert the public from this economic issue? We have stem-cell research and healthcare. Who cares about medical treatment and advancements when a large portion of our population won’t be able to afford them? The real issue is whether the upper classes should be able to do research to find cures for a plethora of ailments.
Then we have gay marriage and abortion, those super-liberal issues. Basically, we’re trying to force people to repress homosexual tendencies, be in heterosexual relationships and then reproduce. They can’t get out of squeezing out those screaming little menaces. If the abortion ban in South Dakota, which is the strictest on the nation, isn’t revoked and the trend spreads, those who get knocked up have two options. The first is to suck it up and raise the kid, but poverty won’t be addressed by the government, so good luck!
The other option is to give it up for adoption. As if it’s not bad enough that a person lacks monetary stability, we then have people – generally those with better economic standing – who come and take your baby. Is the lack of support for a woman’s choice to keep a baby or have an abortion really a classist tactic for upper-class Americans to buy the babies they can’t have or don’t want to have? Basically, this popular political stance is an actual support for baby-buying.
Then we have the war in Iraq. We’re there. As much as I hate it, we’re probably going to be there for some time. It’s a huge issue in the political arena, but I don’t know what a Congressional election is going to cover. It does make me mad that we take inner-city kids and trick them into going to war. If they had money, they wouldn’t find it necessary to die for a cause they don’t care about. We, meaning America’s privileged, are manipulating our lower classes and letting them die for what we want. We could care less what they want, like equality.
If you haven’t caught on, here’s the point. I’m going to vote. I’m going to be empathetic. However, I’m going to be disappointed in our country as we let our classes separate and large groups of people suffer. I guess my ultimate hope is either this changes or it keeps going until we have some sort of Marxist revolution that results in the creation of a democratic socialist state. I’m fine either way.