The gas light was on in the car, and I had $20 in my pocket. I was hoping it would fill my tank. I don’t usually pay close attention to the price of gas because I figure I have to have it regardless of the price. My $20 gave me a little less than half a tank, and I started mentally complaining about how we have to knock off the unnecessary trips.
It didn’t take long for my train of thought to take me into the rabbit hole of how expensive everything is and how badly people are struggling. Here in West Virginia, the minimum wage is $8.75/hr. I noticed when my $20 didn’t fill my tank that gas was $2.39/gallon. That’s less than four gallons of gas for an hour of work at minimum wage. My car, according to an Internet search, holds 14.5 gallons, meaning it would have taken $35 to fill it up, which would be four hours of work at $8.75/hr. Working part-time, that would mean that I worked one shift for a tank of gas. How ridiculous is that?
Or, let’s look at it this way: a three-pound bag of clementines (oranges), which my family loves, is $4.18 at Walmart. For one hour of minimum wage work, I could buy two three-pound bags of clementines. Ground beef is $7.00/pound. I could buy one pound of ground beef for an hour of work. An hour of work at minimum wage will buy one bag of maxi pads (there are three females in my house who use these). I could buy 12 rolls of toilet paper for an hour of minimum wage pay. It would cost two hours of work for a bag of cheap dog food. I could buy one can of coffee, three gallons of milk, one hot n’ ready pizza.
Have you ever thought about minimum wage like that?
Essential Is Essential
How well are you eating if you make minimum wage? How well are you dressing when you’re working for minimum wage? What about extracurricular activities? I dropped $20 last night so my kid could go ice skating (that’s over two hours at $8.75/hr). Non-livable wages are the reason so many working West Virginians rely on safety net income supports.
Now I know you may be thinking that the minimum wage workers should get “better” jobs, but we need these workers. They’re our “essential” workers who keep the shelves stocked and the registers running. They’re a majority of our childcare workers. They’re the home health aides who care for our loved ones. They’re the waitresses at our favorite restaurants. I’ve been in towns here in West Virginia where a Tudor’s Biscuit World (closes at 2 p.m.), a bank, a dollar store, a family-owned diner, and an auto parts store are the only businesses. There isn’t a lot of opportunity there.
We live in a society that screams about their tax dollars paying for SNAP recipients’ food. We buy into the stereotypes of minimum wage workers being unmotivated and lazy; yet, we rely so heavily on those very workers. We begin to throw around our degrees and professions, fearful that someone in poverty’s success might minimize ours, when the truth is that we sought out careers that weren’t minimum wage because they’re not the attractive ones.
All About Opportunity
Raising the minimum wage to $15/hr equates to an annual salary of $31,200 working full-time. I’ve heard arguments that people will lose their assistance from the safety net if this wage is passed, which is absolutely correct. Raising the minimum wage to $15/hr would lift over one million people out of poverty! The increase would come in stages and would take four years to achieve. With a gradual increase, people would have time to prepare for the absence of income support.
Self-reliance is the goal of income support, but we will never be able to lessen the reliance of the safety net until we pay people a living wage. I don’t feel we have any right to tell someone what they need to do for a living. Some people love their retail jobs and fast-food gigs, so who are we to expect our preferences to dictate theirs?
We can’t continue to be a country that blames the poor for their circumstance then refuses to provide opportunities for them to change that circumstance. The roles of the COVID-19 essentials haven’t changed, and neither has our lack of respect for those who don’t choose student loan debt and middle-class jobs.
Let’s stop believing that some of us are more deserving of a livable wage than others. At what point does this become a moral issue?
Onward,
Amy Jo
