On minimum wage.

Even though the city where I live has done pretty decently in raising minimum wage, the current wage doesn't cut it, and even local "progressive" initiatives to bump it up a dollar next year and then another dollar the year after that don't really cut it.

Just think about it: for someone who works 40 hours a week, for 4 weeks a month, the first year's raise works out to something like $160 extra a month pre-tax, then for like 12 months that's something like $1900, only you have taxes, so say it's maybe $1500 after taxes, only bills have been going up like gas and electricity and health insurance and rent so maybe you owe $10 more for utilities a month and $30 more in health insurance and $50 more in rent, so that's like $1000-1100 gone right there, so after all is said and done with, you're talking maybe your being up net like $400 a year at best, which isn't enough to set aside for an emergency, even pretending that you don't have a lot of shit charged up on your credit card right now.

Even if you fast forward one more year to the next raise, at best maybe you get like $1000 to set aside then?

I have no f*cking idea how we dig ourselves out of this low-wage hole that we're in, but minimum wage increases like are on the table right now make things barely tolerable from year to year, without really giving anyone anything to work with and get security out of it, let alone get ahead.

What kind of irks me is how the most leftie local politicians we have speak of this kind of proposal like it's some great thing to push for, and yeah it's nice, and yeah it's necessary, but it's not really all that.

But, I guess that so many politicians just come from a different class background, and though a lot of their hearts are in the right place, they're probably just really out-of-touch, having never lived it, or having few friends who are in it.

Sigh.

And then you wonder why there's so much unrest and dissatisfaction in the country nowadays.