is the minimum wage enough?

The Day after Black Friday

     Well the dribble about minimum wage and raising it to provide the lower class with a better living wage has decreased somewhat . Not saying that lower class people don’t deserve their fair shake but can remember back to my years of starting into the working class and what I was getting paid at the time.

    It seemed like years ago, but my first job was working with Jake Hanlin, a local dairy farmer who paid me a whole dollar and twenty five cents for an hour s worth of throwing hay bales in the summer heat. Mom and Dad paid nothing but instead offered us a cow of our choice in exchange for working all summer long. This wasn’t to bad a deal then when I was growing up although I was never real fond of the parents telling me how to spend my sudden wealth and the fact that they used it as a means to hold you to the farm. As long as you had cattle then you were expected to help provide for them and theirs as well. They would pay us for picking berries though and sometimes a summers picking might get you a whole twenty five dollars if you were lucky enough to find a good patch of berries at ten cents a quart.

     I think talk the talk about minimum wage needs to be put into perspective as I see it in my opinion. Again I venture into the realm of politics and I am going to try and walk the line and see both sides in this matter as well as the impact on us older folks as now I myself am on a fixed income under Social Security and what a higher minimum wage means to me.

    I believe the minimum wage was a whole 2.65 per hour when I first started working and paying into Social Security. It wasn’t much but still it was just subsistence living and it meant that if you didn’t like it then, you needed to learn a better job and receive better pay. It was not meant to be all you needed to survive and for the most part if you were offered something better or longer hours, you took what you could and didn’t cry about it. And out of that pay you still had to pay your Social Security and you were being taxed at a single rate with no insurance or food stamps to subsidize your existence. But then back then in 1974 Reese’s cups were a nickel a piece. Now you can’t even find penny candy or a candy bar for a nickel. And then they were bigger and better. Now it costs over a dollar or better to get the same thing

my old dog bud riding in the bucket and babe clearing the way for me by chasing cows away from the fence

     At that rate a Reese cup was 1.8 percent of your hourly wage at a rate of 2.65 cents per hour. Now a Reese cup is 1.19 cents and is approximately 16.4 percent of a 7.25 cent per hour minimum wage. This is just to buy a Reese cup to sustain your desire and treat yourself to a minimum of your nutritional requirement. The cost of the Reese cup has increased 23.8 times the nickel price in the same time frame although now they package two in a package requiring more paper products that are about the same size as one back then , making you think there is more but in effect is probably less than one back then. So at that rate the minimum wage would have to be around 10.00 dollars to just keep pace with inflation and to make things equal to back then. this is a poor example but still is reflective of inflation as the prices are still real prices for the same item purchased . 

      But now the poor will be getting food stamps and free education if you are within the poverty limits and food stamps to subsidize that 7.25 cent per hour wage. Surely not everyone is college material but still there are a lot more trade colleges now that specialize in getting people employed at higher wages through training at career workshops not available to us then. We had to learn the hard way and college was something that if your parents could afford to send you then you went, otherwise you learned through the school of hard knocks. Most of the kids I went to high school with never had the opportunity and those that did understood that was the difference in getting a good job, and were rewarded for their time at minimum wage.

    Now we are at the age of retirement and it seems as if our bodies have paid the price and some of us are on fixed incomes, much the same as seniors were back then when we started to work. The government had been warning us for years to put more back for these days as social security was not going to keep pace with inflation and it hasn’t. The money I make on disability is going to be the same the rest of my life and except for cost of living increases.
       Inflation and the trickledown effect will soon make the wage increase a temporary fix in an ever growing gap between the rich and the poor. While seniors will feel the brunt of the increase as their monthly checks will remain the same. Those that produce goods and services will just push the cost of minimum wage back on to the consumer and eventually widen the gap disproportionately between the rich and the poor and create a heavier burden on the old retired portion of the population. This will eventually end up with the poor even more dependent on the government.

     Food stamps are a subsidy to the farmer as well to the consumer that uses them and is intended to help sustain the nutrition of those who receive the services. Reform in this area would lead to better usage of this resource for all involved. Specifying the foods that are good for nutrition and eliminating those that are just loaded with sugar and other harmful additives as well as processed foods should be part of the food stamp program. This would force people to eat foods they prepare themselves and eliminate the chicken nugget syndrome we have fallen into. Buying whole foods also helps the farmer directly and subsidizes his income. Unfortunately there is no way we can buy directly from the farmer and up the value of our food stamp dollar without exposing the system to more fraud.

     Buying directly off the farmer as we did years ago eliminates the middle man and yields higher quality products while keeping our small farmers afloat financially. Now we leave it up to the government to subsidize small farmers of whom I am a small part, but our farm does not receive help at all except for an exemption on our land usage resulting in fewer taxes paid on the land.  At the same time large farmers and corporations are receiving tax dollars to support their business and those I believe should be eliminated on all farmers or ag corporations making over a million in gross sales . This is where the majority of the farm support goes. And it these ag corporations that are receiving the most benefit of our food stamp dollar.

      I feel for the young of our society and those that lack the skills to get a better job than what minimum wage will allow. But I don’t think minimum wage was supposed to be the end to the means. It is as it says it is, and I think the young and disadvantaged are much better off today than they were. I think we need to increase our support with food stamps not cut it and we need to make sure those dollars are spent on locally grown whole foods instead of the pre-packaged sugar and salt loaded candy coated gobs of fat, that the food industry wants to shove down our throats, as they buy more medical stock knowing the shit they feed us will eventually result in diabetes and healthcare needs we will have to address later.

      Every person in the U.S. should have good healthcare and good nutrition and this should be as much a right as owning guns, and both should be affordable. Raising the minimum wage will serve no purpose but to spur inflation which will result in increased costs for everything. Instead let’s think about a more practical solution to the problems like maybe replacing those in power as we try to stem the tide of inflation by breaking up the good old boy network that lobbyists find so appealing in Washington. I really don’t know the answer is but instead wonder if we will ever find the answer to making all things equal and at times doubt if we will.

     But who am I?  I hope I don’t rub you all the wrong way but this is my opinion . I respect how others feel and at times have a hard time keeping my mouth shut. But in spite of being an advocate for the little man still have to try and look at things for what they are and I try to the best of my ability. Take it for what it is. And if you don’t like what I say start your own blog.