Minimum wage, living wage, and everyone else

First I want to point out an article I saw today that I totally agree with.


LINK


Now, go read it! Then come back and check this out.

Before MS ravaged me I was making over 16 dollars an hour as a dog cop. Animal Control, the dog catcher if you must call it that. Before you scoff, you should know that I worked tons of overtime on emergencies like a child being mauled, illegal and dangerous exotic animals, someone's lost pup hit by a car, or a family of raccoons invading a family domicile.

If the risks of those aren't enough for you, try being depended on by every other emergency support agency for any issue where an animal shows up. Warrant served on a guy with attack dogs? We had to be there. House on fire with pets? We had to be there. Armed standoff and there are pets? We had to be there. Murder scene? Yep. Suicide? Yep. Drug bust? Yep. Been on them all and more. And our officers didn't even wear bullet proof vests until the last half of my job stay. That's 6 and a half years with about 3 years open chested and being threatened every other day. Yes. We were threatened over people and their stupid animal issues.

So, do I think I deserved to be paid more than someone flipping burgers for a living? Let me explain something to you.

Fast food is the single largest job market of our economy. Biggest one, bar none. The days of it being a 'breakthrough' to the job market are gone. So let's get with the freaking times, shall we?

Here's the truth. We are all underpaid. Now back up and read that last sentence again. Keep doing that until it sinks in. I mean all of us. Every single one who isn't some corporate fat cat looking down from his pile of money laughing his ass off at all of us. Everyone who isn't a politician with three mansions and a fleet of yachts paid for with our tax dollars.

No one, from soldier or firemen to broom pushers, are being paid enough to support a family on a single income. And depending on where you live and the demographics involved you are only slightly better or worse off. Need I remind you of the practically non-existent middle class? Where did they go? And you want to bitch about what a fast food worker makes. They aren't the ones who screwed everything up. Leave them alone.

What we need to do is take a page from their playbook and put up a fight for ourselves. Stop corporations from sending all their jobs overseas. Enforce fair and competitive pay rates. And especially, especially, stop the corporate assholes from responding by jacking prices through the roof so things stay just as bad as they've ever been.

I can't believe we are up in arms over a guy wrapping a sandwich when our politicians and corporate slimeballs are the ones hoarding all the money. They are the ones who have made it so that we can't afford what even they are selling. Then, for every family they force into the poor house (with loss of homes and cars and jobs) they sneer and tell that family to get a job. You know, all those people who lost their houses because of rip off scams allowed by our own government? Do you know how many of those people have found justice and got their homes back? Maybe 1%, but I'm leaning toward NO ONE. But let's get mad at the employees over at Burger King and McDonalds while we still buy their food. Yeah, that make sense.

Isn't it amazing how the oil companies cry all year and then report that they made 65 billion dollars in new record profits? They make record profits every single year. Every single year. Get it? I wonder. Do the grunt employees get record raises every single year? I bet not. I bet Betty the paper pusher hasn't seen a raise in 10 years easy.

If you think you're having fun now, get this; you have a 50%-60% of becoming disabled before retirement age. You pay for disability insurance throughout your employed life. You know what you'll get for SSD without dependants? I get 1100 bucks a month. Divide that by 80 and you get the equivalent of 13.75 an hour. And that's money I paid for. Service I worked for and earned. It's not welfare. So go ahead and tell me I should be paid less than a burger flipper. Don't say it isn't the same thing because what you'll be missing out on is that earning a living is just that; earning a living.

It's time to see that we are all in the same leaky, crappy boat. Now what are YOU going to do about it?