THE WAGE GAP

In these economic hard times you will heAR a lot of talk about the unemployed. The unemployment rate in the United States is now at 10%, after all. Much more infrequently you will heAR some politician mention the under-employed. This group includes people who work full-time but do not make enough money. Same said politician will then state that the key to helping the under-employed is to train them to allow them to get better, higher-paying jobs with benefits and such. You will then here nothing more about the under-employed for quite a while after that. It is as if trusted advisors slapped the politician silly after the speech was done. They might have done so to get this politician to see that the idea of getting the under-employed better paying jobs is ridiculous.

How is it that every worker in our country is going to have a high-paid technical job? Is every worker in our country going to be a doctor, lawyer, politician, or administrator? Is everyone else going to run their own business? Are all of the rest going to be professors, teachers, and technicians? What a wonderful country that would be.

Now what do you do at the end of the week in this new utopia where everyone has a high-paid technical career? Do you take the family and go shopping at the mall? Who's going to ring up your purchases? Do you go to the movies? Who’s going to clean up after the last crowd so you have a clean seat? Who’s going to sell you your ticket? Who’s going to pop your corn? Do you go out for a pizza after? Who’s going to wash the dishes, make your food, bring it to you, clean the bathroom, and bus your table? Who’s going to monitor the parking garage where you left your car? Who’s going to watch your kids, for that matter, while your out making lots of money at your fancy new job?

These positions that I just mentioned are where the under-employed are. They are working at jobs that no one respects enough to pay a decent wage for. They are working at child-care centers, old folks homes, and restaurants where the climate is so competitive that the owners have to keep prices(and therefor wages) low. These workers work as hard every day as doctors and lawyers yet they make a tiny fraction of a doctor’s or lawyer’s salary.

People need a living wage, but they’re never going to get it. Doctors who make $150,000 dollars a year would never pay the price for a pizza that would allow a pizza cook to buy a little house and have health insurance and send his kids to college. Lawyers that make $100,000 a year would not want to pay twice or three times as much for childcare so that preschool teachers could have health insurance. People who make money at any of these RESPECTED jobs would never want someone to make a living at an UNRESPECTED job.

Remember: The only way that they can tell themselves from us is that they have a big pile of money.