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Earning a Livable Wage
"Millions of Americans are still unemployed or making inappropriate pay."
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By
Nick Garcia
The 2004 Presidential campaign? Sure, I’m following it, but people aren’t touching on the issues I care about. All this politician talk about things like “Living Wage,” you hear it all the time…but do they really mean it? Probably not.
Most politicians have no idea what it’s like in the real world because the majority of their lives, they are surrounded by money. They don’t know what it’s like to struggle. Most Americans live to work not because they want to, but because they have to. In the working world, people are supposed to make livable wages but what’s a livable wage to politicians? Or even affordable education? They don’t get the reality…
I believe to live is to be happy, but how can you be happy when all you do is work?
I work for the United States Postal Service. And because I’m young, it seems like people think they can take advantage of me, giving me a wage that is just enough to survive. All my money goes to housing, food and my daily necessities, leaving me with very little money. I don’t have enough to really put aside and save. You’d figure the United States Postal service would pay their employees well. But to me, they seem as greedy as everyone else. To the government, my wages are livable…. but they are not. Instead of livable wages it’s more like survival wages.
You might ask why I don’t just go to school. But it’s not that simple. Don’t get me wrong I would love to go back to school and finish my education. The higher the education, the higher the wages. But unfortunately right now I can’t.
You have to understand I have no father and mother to take care of me and I didn’t do so well in high school. That leaves me with community college, hoping to do well enough so that someday I am able to transfer to a university. And once I graduate, I’ll be left in debt trying to pay off school funds. Then what? I’m left in my thirties trying to afford a house, once again in debt trying to pay off the loans, and interest for the house. By the time I meet all of these goals I will be old and miserable. Wondering what life would have been like without struggling to survive.
Our President says he’d like to do things like bring immigrants over to America and let them have the opportunity to work and even become citizens. But I wish he would concentrate on our wages instead. Millions of Americans are still unemployed or making inappropriate pay. I think Bush should think more about our employment crisis and our country’s deficit instead of spending money on war in Iraq, sending unreliable machines to Mars, or trying to educate the youth of America on marriage. There’s no reason to spend money on this crap. And maybe one day, I’ll know that my taxes will go to a better cause.
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