Contemplating two very different Americas

 

Last updated 1/18/2013 at 3:48pm



On Monday, January 21, we celebrate both Martin Luther King, Jr., Day and the inauguration of Barack Obama. Much has happened between the Civil Rights Movement, which began in 1954 with Brown vs. Board of Education, to the election of America’s first bi-racial president to another term in office.

In April of 1968, King went to Memphis, Tennessee, to support the sanitation workers striking for better working conditions and a living wage. Not only had he fought discrimination against all minorities in this country, he also committed himself to achieving social justice for all through nonviolent means.

His goal to bring about economic justice ended with his death. And as a nation we have been waiting for economic justice ever since.

Today, we are still facing the basic question Reverend King raised: What type of country do we want to be – more democratic or more discriminatory?

One way of answering that query is by examining how we say we should spend money as a nation – it gives us a vision of our country’s future.

Since 1981, many political economists have pointed out that taxpayers have paid for programs and tax exemptions that have made private business profitable and the elite richer. This enriching of the top 2% has come at the expense of the middle class and the poor who subsidize the top 2% under the guise that wealth to the top will trickle down. We know now in 2013 that “just ain’t so.” Never was true. Never will be true.

There are those now in Congress who rail against the deficit and want to cut social programs – Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment benefits, food stamps for the poor, women, children, infants, and the elderly, assistance to veterans, etc. Yet these same elected officials have supported two wars without paying for them. Some of these same elected officials have voted for bills that added $6.8 trillion to the national deficit.

Federal policy since 1981 has generally favored big business and the top 2% and has placed an enormous burden on education to reduce poverty. Supposedly, education will lead to more jobs, but the facts give the lie to that premise. Today, about 14.4 million Americans are seeking jobs of any kind, and around 4 million jobs are available.

The Department of Labor notes that between 2010 and 2020, 67% of the new jobs will require less than a post-secondary education. Of course, many of those jobs will pay minimum wage, and many of those will be less than 40 hours a week, so companies will save on benefits. Some like Wal-Mart rely on taxpayer money to compensate for low wages by pushing healthcare costs and support of the working poor onto the state.

In October of 2012, the New York Times reported that the widening use of part time pushes workers into poverty and food stamps and Medicaid, the very programs some in Congress want to eliminate. The Department of Labor Statistics reports in 2012 that 3 in 10 workers were part time, with the average wage of $8.90 an hour. Many states provide the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, far below the income needed to raise a worker from poverty level to a living-wage level, regardless of the worker’s education level.

In Washington, the minimum wage is now $9.19 an hour. What does this mean to those in Lincoln County? A living wage, as calculated by MIT, for 1 adult with two children is $21.76 an hour. For a two-parent home with 1 child, the living wage minimum would have to be $15.31 an hour.

As admirable as increasing the minimum wage in the state is, it will not help the working poor move out of poverty into the middle class. And given the projected job market for the next 7 years, most of those jobs will require a high school diploma or less and will pay minimum wage, mostly for less than 40 hours a week.

Have we achieved the economic justice of a living wage as envisioned by Martin Luther King, Jr.?

Until we as a nation address the economic issues of the working poor and the middle class, the poverty-zone wages and the problems that go with them will give us two very different Americas.

Dr. Duane Pitts teaches English at Odessa High School.

 

Reader Comments(0)

 
 

Our Family of Publications Includes:

Cheney Free Press
Ritzville Adams County Journal
Whitman County Gazette
Odessa Record
Franklin Connection
Davenport Times
Spokane Valley News Herald
Colfax Daily Bulletin

Powered by ROAR Online Publication Software from Lions Light Corporation
© Copyright 2024