Sonny Clark
Diamond Member
- Banned
- #1
[ This is a piece that I wrote 11 1/2 years ago on 9/21/2003. It seems to me that it certainly could apply to today's America. ]
Low Income Living
One of the modern mysteries is how so many are living on so little income. With minimum wages twenty-five years behind the times, and the extremely high cost of living, how are we surviving? If we look at just the bare necessities to survive, a single person would be hard pressed to make it on minimum wages. I’ve often wondered what data the Federal Government calculates to arrive at the minimum wage figure. One thing for sure, they’re not using the cost of living in their calculations. It’s not uncommon in southern Arizona and southern Texas for four or five immigrant families to live in the same house and share expenses, all working at minimum wage jobs, just to survive. People all over the country are getting government assistance to supplement their low income.
A real heartbreaker is the amount our elderly are asked to survive on, considering most can’t work to supplement the small monthly check they get from the government. With economic times being what they are, now would be the perfect time for a book entitled “ A COMPLETE GUIDE TO LOW INCOME LIVING”. Don’t laugh, though many are already very experienced in this level of living, many more are joining the ranks every day. I can imagine someone living very comfortably and suddenly falling on hard times, completely lost in a new environment of low-income living. They would need all the help such a book would offer, especially the chapter on “developing new friends”. Places such as “trailer parks” and “the ghetto” would certainly have to be given a chapter in the book, to explain all the jokes about their connection to low-income living.
Low-income living will soon become the majority life-style in America, as we’re rapidly losing the middle class sector of society. In the very near future there’ll be a wide gap between the low-income and upper class sectors of society, with nothing in between. It wasn’t that long ago when America was considered the richest and most prosperous country on earth, with opportunity on every street corner. Now, America is rapidly becoming a land of low wages and vanishing prosperity for many. Though low-income living is one notch above the poor, which is one notch above the homeless, it would still be difficult for those that have been riding the wave of middle and upper middle class living to adjust to. Unfortunately, as more immigrants come into this country willing to work for minimum wages, and our jobs leave this country, the adjustment to low-income living will be a fact of life for many that are presently earning above average wages. The remedy for this economic catastrophe is very simple; raise the minimum wages and bring our jobs back to this country. What’s so hard about that? But, until that happens, low-income living is growing and here to stay.
Low Income Living
One of the modern mysteries is how so many are living on so little income. With minimum wages twenty-five years behind the times, and the extremely high cost of living, how are we surviving? If we look at just the bare necessities to survive, a single person would be hard pressed to make it on minimum wages. I’ve often wondered what data the Federal Government calculates to arrive at the minimum wage figure. One thing for sure, they’re not using the cost of living in their calculations. It’s not uncommon in southern Arizona and southern Texas for four or five immigrant families to live in the same house and share expenses, all working at minimum wage jobs, just to survive. People all over the country are getting government assistance to supplement their low income.
A real heartbreaker is the amount our elderly are asked to survive on, considering most can’t work to supplement the small monthly check they get from the government. With economic times being what they are, now would be the perfect time for a book entitled “ A COMPLETE GUIDE TO LOW INCOME LIVING”. Don’t laugh, though many are already very experienced in this level of living, many more are joining the ranks every day. I can imagine someone living very comfortably and suddenly falling on hard times, completely lost in a new environment of low-income living. They would need all the help such a book would offer, especially the chapter on “developing new friends”. Places such as “trailer parks” and “the ghetto” would certainly have to be given a chapter in the book, to explain all the jokes about their connection to low-income living.
Low-income living will soon become the majority life-style in America, as we’re rapidly losing the middle class sector of society. In the very near future there’ll be a wide gap between the low-income and upper class sectors of society, with nothing in between. It wasn’t that long ago when America was considered the richest and most prosperous country on earth, with opportunity on every street corner. Now, America is rapidly becoming a land of low wages and vanishing prosperity for many. Though low-income living is one notch above the poor, which is one notch above the homeless, it would still be difficult for those that have been riding the wave of middle and upper middle class living to adjust to. Unfortunately, as more immigrants come into this country willing to work for minimum wages, and our jobs leave this country, the adjustment to low-income living will be a fact of life for many that are presently earning above average wages. The remedy for this economic catastrophe is very simple; raise the minimum wages and bring our jobs back to this country. What’s so hard about that? But, until that happens, low-income living is growing and here to stay.