A Promise Not Kept: Raising the Minimum Wage

Because I find myself right smack in the middle when it comes to politics, I don't just get my news from one source.  I know various websites lean one way or the other and usually skew their writing to push their agendas. I won't lie to you and tell you that I'm passionate about politics.  Just like news outlets, all politicians have their own agendas, and rarely, are they unselfish ones.  However, there are some issues that I get riled up about, and the way our workers are treated in this country is one of them.  There are many aspects to this, but the one I'm writing about today is the promise made by Obama to raise the minimum wage.

The other morning my nephew and I were talking about gas prices.  Yes, we had the conversation about how things "used to be" when I was younger and what that meant.  I told him I remember gas being 86 cents a gallon when I was in high school.  The minimum wage then was somewhere around 5 bucks.  Today, gas is 3 to 4 dollars a gallon and the minimum wage is less than 8 bucks.  We talked about how while the cost of living has increased dramatically, the money Americans make to live on is not that much more than what it was many years ago.

Whether or not  minimum wage jobs are entry level jobs, seems irrelevant to me. Americans should not have to work three jobs in order to pay their rent.  As far as how this affects me directly, I wait tables in order to put myself through school.  I am a tipped employee, whose wage is 2.13 hr plus tips.  It has been that way for decades. This morning I came across the following article on the FOX NEWS Website: Obama to Raise the Minimum Wage for Federal Contractors. The president has decided to sign an executive order raising the minimum for federal contractors from 7.25 to 10.10 an hour.  However, this only applies to new contracts and not the currents ones.  The article goes on to ask a very important question, "how many will this really help?"  Apparently, the President doesn't have the power to raise the minimum wage for the private sector all on his own.  I wonder, has he forgotten his promise in last years' State of the Union speech?  Well, I'm hearing you guys say, "The President has forgotten more than that promise!" Maybe we will reserve those issues for later.

A Small Window into My Political Views

As a child, my mother came from a religious and conservative family. And as most children do, she rebelled, and therefore I wasn't raised with either of those. She did what she wanted and didn't limit herself to the boundaries that her family had tried to impose on her. However, I spent quite a bit of time with my grandparents who would pick me up every Sunday for church.  As a teenager, I was very involved in the Church of Christ.  In certain ways, you can't participate in many religions without acceptance of their stance on politics.  It's almost an unspoken law that your political affiliations coincide with your religion. So, mine did.  I didn't believe in abortion, I believed that homosexuality was a sin, I didn't believe in sex before marriage... and the list goes on.  I was very conservative.  But yet, my life was just starting. I had yet, to really live, to experience things from my own perspective, instead of through the eyes of the people closest to me. During my twenties, my best friend died, my brother died three months later, and subsequently an addiction followed that served a purpose too.  Having survived all of this, and lived to "tell the tale," as they say, changed who I am and what I thought as a young adult.  I mean, how could it not?  So, my political beliefs, today?  Well, I'm sure you're thinking I've totally taken the train left, and that I can't even see the right, but that would be wrong.  I fall somewhere in the middle.  I took the political theology test, and it suggested that I'm post modern. For example, I don't think we do enough for equality of race, of sex, of economics.  I think that we are destroying the environment with our endless list of wants.  I think it's a sad thing that a gallon of gas costs 3-4 dollars, and that minimum wage is barely twice that. I think that people have the right to be who they are, whether that means, gay, straight, or transgender.  This country was founded on the idea of freedom. Who are any of us to take that away?  I don't believe in telling people that they can't carry guns. I believe that certain drugs should be legalized. I do think as a powerful country we should be able to take our forces and put dictators that are hurting the human race OUT of power. I do believe people on government aide should be drug tested and required to further their education.  I also have a big problem with the jail system in this world, and I can't wait to write a blog about it.  This is where I stand now, and I suppose the longer my life gets, the more it could change.  I guess we'll just have to wait and see.