Fording the Wage Gap

In an America where the average cost of living for an average family is near to $60,000 a year (http://cost-of-living.findthedata.org/l/615/National-Average), we are staggeringly still paying $7.25 an hour minimum, which results in $15,080 a year individual income ASSUMING one can find full-time employ in this turbulent job market (http://poverty.ucdavis.edu/faq/what-are-annual-earnings-full-time-minimum-wage-worker). That is to say, a dual-income family, with both wage earners employed full time, will pull just over $30,000 a year. That is HALF WAY to the poverty threshold. And that is in the rosiest of possible minimum wage earning situations, which is for many absolutely not the case. Meanwhile, corporate America is fighting the idea of raising the minimum to a living wage tooth and nail. Personally, I find this refusal astonishingly myopic. After all, until we decide we are okay with rampant starvation and homelessness in America, the under employed, unemployed, and underpaid must seek out taxpayer assistance simply to live. And yet, as Michael Moore points out, a hundred years ago, one of the most venerable architects of American industry,  Henry Ford, paid the adjusted-for-inflation equivalent of $15 and hour. This was based on the simple idea that not only should a worker be able to LIVE on his or her wages, but should be able to afford the product they are in fact working to build. It is a head-hanging shame that "in a country about eight times as rich per person" as Ford's day, we see full-time employed people in a welfare line. Henry Ford understood that reinvestment into the working class fuels the furnace of capitalism, by diversifying one's customer base. When one considers the lamentations from the right at the deplorable welfare state, one wonders how those same voices decry making it possible for vast swaths of Americans to WORK for a LIVING wage rather than work for half a living and ask for taxpayer dividends to close the income gap. As a student, working part time and in school full time, this issue hits home particularly. Part-time supplemental jobs rarely come at much above the minimum wage, and without the cushion of family help and financial aid, I personally would not be in a position to live with anything resembling comfort. In looking to our future, maybe it's time America started thinking like Henry did, a hundred years in the past.

Hey there, hi there, ho there!

Welcome everyone, to my new blog!  My name is Cecily, and I'll be your hostess!  This is a blog beginning its life as a government class assignment, but I have been meaning to start a blog, and hope to continue forward after the class ends.

Politically, I am somewhere in the middle, as the blog title might suggest. I am known to irritate both the far left and the far right in political discussions because I prefer a pragmatic approach that tends to have my stances changing depending on the issue, not so much the predefined left or right position. Many of my more "liberal" stances are fed by a conservative value set, and vice versa on my so-called "conservative" viewpoints. For example, I believe strongly in LGBT rights and equality, but this comes less from a desire to "redefine" or "progress" anything, but more from a perspective that all men (and women) are created equal, and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. I can't think of a more conservative document to allude to, in America, than the Declaration of Independence. America, ever the land of ideas, has also become the land of labels. Left, Right, Republican, Democrat, all are just labels that try to neatly box up complex and crucial issues into all-or-nothing categories.

Personally, I believe that's not how people or politics works. The greater good is not best served by factionalizing and dividing the identity of Americans. To move forward as a nation, we must come together as a people.

My political experience has been varied. I have voted in every national election since 2004, and local and state elections since 2001. I have voted all over the board, really, depending on office and who I felt could best fill positions. Presidentially, I have voted for Libertarian Michael Badnarik in 2004, Democrat Barak Obama in 2008, and Green Party candidate Jill Stein in 2012. I have worked in political polling and demography both at The Gallup Organization and a smaller company called Promark Research. I have volunteered in voter registration drives, worked in student organizations for assorted causes, and worked for nonprofits including Equality Texas and Environment Texas. I participate in several active political discussion groups on Facebook, and I never miss a chance to discuss political issues with others, because political discourse is where Americans can find their voice, and in that voice, power.

I look forward to learning and discussing with my fellow classmates, and anyone else who should happen by.