Category Archives: Life

So looking at the news, I see more and more gun and drug problems. Anyone stop to think that maybe, if people could make a living off from their jobs, that maybe, just maybe, they would not be so quick to turn to drugs and violence? I mean seriously? Minimum wage is supposed to be the minimum wage someone can live on in our country, how the hell do they expect you to live on 7.25 an hour? So figure if you are working a 40 hour week, which most part time positions do not, as they do not want to have to pay benefits like insurance and such, you make roughly $290 per week before taxes.. So call it $210 after taxes. So figure, they are making roughly $800 to $1000 per month? Ok, so now lets look at the US National average for rent.. http://www.deptofnumbers.com/rent/us/ Hrm, so call it $900? So you can almost pay rent for 1 month on average with your minimum wage job.. Ok, lets say you live somewhere that you can get an apartment, even a dump for half the national average.. so $450. Now lets figure that you like food.. Food prices have went up a lot over the last few years. but, for the sake of argument, that you manage to somehow eat for $50 per week, far below the US average, but 8% of Americans say they manage it http://www.gallup.com/poll/156416/americans-spend-151-week-food-high-income-180.aspx. So you are spending $200-$250 a month on food. That is bare basics considering I know we can easily blow $100 on food for 2 bags of groceries if we are not careful. So now, out of that $800 per month, we have spent $650-$700 depending on 4 or 5 week month, and looking at an apartment that is half the national average and looking at spending less than 92% of Americans do on food per week. So now you want a phone? TV? Electric?($111) Water? Mandatory health insurance? Car? Public Transportation? You are looking at least one more job, just to cover basic costs.. and that is not even looking at if you are one of the many who actually took college classes and have student loans to pay for that left you still working a minimum wage job.
I see all these people arguing that we need more gun control. No we don’t. We need people who are not desperate to survive. What would you be willing to do to survive? Sell drugs? Hold up a store? Ok, so how about if you have a family and your child is sick? What would you be willing to do for your sick child? Still think it is a gun problem? In a time when corporations are making record profits, why is the middle class dwindling and the lower class growing? I still say they need to tax the crap out of corporate profits for a few years, and tax the crap out of any salary that more than three or four times the national average of $44k. Then raise the minimum wage. If they can not give all the money to the executives without paying huge taxes, and would have to pay large sums of taxes on profits, they are less likely to raise the costs of goods to maintain a high profit margin. I am not saying they should not make profits, but when profits come at the expense of the people doing all the work, maybe it is time for things to change?
Corporate welfare needs to stop. Creating a new slave population by giving people barely enough to live on needs to stop. Everyone taking their share of profits from the basic necessities of life needs to stop. You wonder why our society has a drug and violence problem? I am surprised we do not have more of a problem. They are doing everything they can to make it so we have no choice but to work for them cheap to survive. Seriously. Many places are making it illegal to collect rain water.. Many are making it mandatory that you are connected to the power grid. Gee, I wonder why they wanna take our guns away? It is not a gun problem. It is a desperation problem. We put our mental patients on the street by cutting social programs, give more corporate subsidies, and then the corporate runs news about the guns and violence problems and how we need to cut more social programs so the country can quit losing money. I have an idea, how about we stop paying house and senate 4 times the national average of $44k, stop giving 92 Billion a year away to corporations making Billions and seriously look at making a single payer health care system. All of which will never happen as long as corporations have lobbyists in DC bending our elected officials ears, while the American people do not. Consider this, Corporations can now spending huge amounts of money getting someone elected, then send a lobbyist to Washington DC to hang with them and influence them.
We need to take back our government from big money and big corporations. We need to change the laws again to not allow big corporations to donate to get public officials elected. Our government should not be for sale. Then we can see about making sure everyone has a living wage and decent health care. Then maybe we can fix the “gun and drug” problem, of course, at that point, maybe there will not be one, because people will not be so desperate just to survive.