It's 6:00am and that annoying beep of your alarm is ringing in your ears. You get up, start the coffee maker, shower, and get dressed in your work attire. You start your car and back out of your drive-way before noticing that you're running on the last fumes of your tank. You drive to nearest gas station where you see gas prices have, once again, risen.
The aforementioned scenario is only one of many examples of the depreciating value of the dollar. In fact, in the past five years, the CPI-U has increased from 168.8 to 190.7 - that's a 12.97% inflationary increase (Historical CPI)! Sure, to Corporate Joe in his fancy sports car, a few extra pennies for gas isn’t much, but what about the school janitor who is trying to successfully raise a family of four on minimum wage?
The most immediate reality behind Living Wage organizing is the dramatic erosion of the minimum wage. Even with the 1996 increase to $5.15 an hour the buying power of the minimum wage is still 30 percent below its peak in 1968. This is true despite the fact the economy was about fifty percent more productive than in 1968. A minimum wage that had kept pace with productivity gains would be roughly $11.20 today (Pollin and Luce, 58).
In fact, in 2003 the poverty rate rose from 12.1 to 12.5 percent leaving 35.9 million people at or below the poverty line of $18,660 for a family of four (U.S. Census Bureau). These 35.9 million people trudge through their manual labor occupations day in and day out only to see the (few) dollars they earn slowly depreciate in value.
In 1906, John Ryan, advocate of the living wage, wrote "Every man who is willing to work, has, therefore an inborn right to sustenance from the earth and on reasonable terms or conditio...
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...ome of the fiscal burden they experience. With the increasingly inflating dollar and therefore the depreciating value of the minimum wage, an implementation of a universal living wage would be the humanitarian thing to do.
Works Cited
Historical Consumer Price Index. Historical CPI. 2003. 4 March 2015.
Pollin, Robert and Stephanie Luce. The Living Wage: Building A Fair Economy. New York: New Press, 1998.
U.S. Census Bureau. Poverty 2003 Highlights. 26 August 2004. 25 February 2015.
< http://www.census.gov/hhes/poverty/poverty03/pov03hi.html>
Glickman, Lawrence. A Living Wage: American Workers and the Making of a Consumer Society. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997.
Acorn.org. ACORN: About Acorn. 2005. 2 March 2015.
The gap in wealth between the rich and the poor continues to grow larger, as productivity increases but wages remain the same. There were changes in the tax structure that gave the wealthy tax breaks, such as only taxing for social security within the first $113,700 of income in a year. For CEOs this tax was paid off almost immediately. Free trade treaties broke barriers to trade and resulted in outsourcing and lower wages for workers. In “Job on the Line” by William Adler, a worker named Mollie James lost her job when the factory moved to Mexico. “The job in which Mollie James once took great pride, the job that both fostered and repaid her loyalty by enabling her to rise above humble beginnings and provide for her family – that job does not now pay Balbina Duque a wage sufficient to live on” (489). When Balbina started working she was only making 65 cents an hour. Another huge issue lies in the minimum wage. In 2007, the minimum wage was only 51% of the living wage in America. How can a person live 51% of a life? Especially when cuts were being made in anti-poverty and welfare programs that were intended to get people on their feet. Now, it seems that the system keeps people down, as they try to earn more but their benefits are taken away faster than they can earn. Even when workers tried to get together to help themselves they were thrown
In order to assess the degree of appeal for the political reforms offered by the Utopian Socialists, their ideals should be examined from both structural and programmatic point of view. Programmatic point of view helps us to clarify the basis of political reforms of the Utopian Socialists whereas the structural point of view forms the theoretical basis of these practical actions and reform plans.
“Workers Make Appeal to Taxpayers,” also follows Andrew Olson, a McDonald 's worker who makes $8.60 an hour, and his fiance who makes minimum wage in their experience under the poverty line. “Their salaries are so meager [...] that they rely on food stamps and Medicaid to get by,” says Kelly about Olson’s current living status, a lifestyle most Americans involuntarily live. Aside from the benefits wreaked by business owners and taxpayers, the workers living on poor salaries prove as the most positively and heavily affected; the three point nine percent of working citizens treated unfairly by big businesses. “Workers Make Appeal to Taxpayers” concludes with a quote from Olson, “Just because I work in fast food, does that mean I should have to just scrape by in
Reeves, Eileen Adair., and Helden Albert. Van. On Sunspots. Chicago: University of Chicago, 2010. Print.
In our attempt to achieve the "perfect society" in which everyone is happy we have failed to realize that happiness means something different for everyone, and that severe contradictions will destroy a so called "perfect society". Webster's dictionary defines a Utopia as, "An ideally perfect place, especially in its social, political, and moral aspects" (696). A Utopia symbolizes a society perfect in every way for everyone. In the real world we must endure many hardships: disease, poverty, violence, natural disasters, and so on. In an effort to put an end to all of these detriments to existence people strive to create Utopias. Novelist Aldous Huxley, in his novel Brave New World, describes a fictional utopia. Huxley's utopia has many problems that are realized by some of the characters in the book. For these characters the morally deprived world of conditioned people in which they live is revealed to be in fact a dystopia or an anti-utopia. In reality as well as fiction utopias are often attempted. However, as is true in the utopia described by Aldous Huxley, real-life utopias often fail as well. Jim Jones, the leader of the People's Temple, endeavored to create a utopia during the 1960's and 70's based on equality and social justice. The People's Temple met it's ultimate demise when, under the orders of Jim Jones himself, the mass suicide/murder of all the members of Jones' Guyana Community occured. Jim Jones's and Aldous Huxley's societies represent two dystopias with both similarities and differences.
Although everyone knows that the world is not perfect as is, several philosophers have iterated their ideas of what a perfect and ideal society, a utopia, would look like. Some such philosophers were Thomas More in 1516 through his fictional book, Utopia, and Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848 through their pamphlet, The Communist Manifesto. In Utopia, three characters discuss Hythloday’s travels to the land of Utopia and why it is superior to other nations, while in The Communist Manifesto, the authors plan actions to overthrow the oppressive bourgeois class and create a classless society. Although Marx and Engels do not explicitly state that they seek a utopian society like More does, the description of the resulting society of their revolution meets the criteria of their own perfect society. Both works come about as a result of their political and social contexts at the time of authorship, with Utopia being a result of the feudal system in Europe
Many people against raising the minimum wage create arguments such as, “it will cause inflation”, or, “ it will result in job loss.” Not only are these arguments terribly untrue, they also cause a sense of panic towards the majority working-class. Since 1938, the federal minimum wage has been increased 22 times. For more than 75 years, real GDP per capita has consistently increased, even when the wage has been
In 1906 Father John Ryan, a renowned social and economic intellectual within the Catholic Church, published a book titled A Living Wage: Its Ethical and Economic Aspects. The book introduced to America workers the idea of a guaranteed minimum pay determined by the basic costs of living and set the stage for later minimum wage legislation during the 1930’s. Over the last decade, the idea of a living wage has resurfaced as workers have become more outspoken about the inadequacies of the federal and state minimum wage levels. Living wage legislation for government workers has taken effect in major U.S. cities such as Baltimore, Los Angeles, San Jose, Detroit, Boston, and many more. This paper will discuss the moral, social, and economic implications of instituting these laws as well as labor conditions around the world and the need for guaranteed living wages in countries such as India and Mexico.
...ctually go to the beach and park and do fun things like Ryan, Daniel, Sunya, and the other kids in my class do on holidays. Then I will have something to actually share in class like the other kids.
Over the past decade, politicians have sought to reform the national poverty levels by lobbying for what is frequently referred to as a living wage. Living wages, on the most elementary level, are the absolute minimum a person must make per year or per hour to stay above the federal poverty level. While the number of people that receive living wages is still small, Wood (2002) suggests that this is a trend that is gaining momentum across the United States because it may help reduce employee turnover and increase worker productivity.
In today’s society, the question of minimum wage is a large political topic. Many people argue that it is impossible to live on a minimum wage lifestyle. In her novel Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich looks into this issue. In an experiment in which she mimics the life of a single woman, she moves into the low-wage workforce in three different cities in America. Within these cities, she attempts to make a living off of low-wage work and records her experiences, as well as the experiences of the true low-wage workers around her. Throughout Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich utilizes both vivid imagery and data in order to persuade the audience to agree that the low-wage lifestyle is truly un-livable.
Utopia certainly takes the character of a communist society. It meets the criteria of a moneyless society where the means of production are held in common ownership. It is certainly not the communism of Karl Marx though. The grey areas present in whether Utopia is stateless and classless do not allow me to be comfortable in dubbing More’s Utopia a communist society. More importantly though Utopia was not conceived out of a class struggle between the bourgeoisie class and the proletariat class in capitalism. Capitalism itself was in just its early developments during the lifetime of Thomas
Understanding more about sunspots, their cycle, radiation, and magnetic properties will facilitate scientists to unlock the mysterious workings of the Sun. With today’s technology this understanding will come more quickly. Knowledge of sunspots may lead us to be able to predict when solar activity could affect the Earth like it did during the solar max in 1989. Information like this could eventually allow us to be able to protect ourselves from solar radiation.
The cost of living can become very expensive and with these expenses, money is necessary. By raising the minimum wage, living expenses could be less of a financial crisis for families. A higher minimum wage would also supply families with more ease because the struggle of making ends meet would be less. This paper discusses the advantages of a higher minimum wage, why it is necessary for those who live in, or are very close to living in poverty, and the shortcomings of the current minimum wage. All of this is to say that, the current minimum wage is not enough for families to survive on so it must be raised.
Is a Utopian State a Possibility in The Future: The Inherent Flaws of Utopia as Shown in A Brave New World