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.