Cities Advance Their Fight Against Rising Inequality
Original Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/07/business/economy/cities-advancing-inequality-fight.html
Protestors in Seattle
This article
discussed a debate in the Seattle, Washington city council to raise the minimum
wage to $15 per hour from $9.32 per hour because no changes are coming from
Washington to raise the national minimum wage. The article used charts and
statistics to show that the gap between the people making the most money and
the people making the least. Since the article was based on Seattle, they used
the numbers that the “top 10%” of households in Seattle made eleven times as
much as the “bottom 10%”. The article also featured a woman who was 47 years
old and working in a fast-food restaurant who was having her hours cut back and
who could not afford to pay her bills on the $9.50 per hour that she was
earning.
The
connection to what we are doing in class is with the Russian folk tales and the
difference between the upper class and the working classes in Russia. In class,
I am reading A Christmas Tree
and a Wedding, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. This story is about a man who attends
a rich person’s Christmas party and how the people at the party treated a poor
child who was also there. In Russia in the 1800’s and up to the 1917
Revolution, writers like Dostoyevsky wrote about how bad conditions were for
the poor and that the rich people didn’t care about them or how they lived and
that the rich could basically do whatever they wanted.
My reaction
to this story comes from learning about how businesses work in my Personal
Management class and from my Business class at Gaston College since I have
never had a job where anyone paid me by the hour. Small businesses will have to
raise their prices or cut jobs to be able to afford to pay $15 per hour. If
Wal-Mart and other businesses cut jobs, then the people without jobs will not
be able to shop there. Jobs like working at McDonalds should be for teenagers
just starting to work and not for people trying to take care of their kids. If
someone doesn’t like their job, they should go back to school and get a better
job or work really hard to earn more where they already are.
The author
used charts and statistics to try and show their idea that these people needed
to be paid more and the connection with affordable housing. The interesting
thing I see in this chart is that the cities that were the most expensive to
live in were the worst in the gap between the top and bottom 10%. This did not
convince me that the minimum wage needs to be raised; instead, it convinced me
that people who live in the expensive cities need to move.
The article also included a chart
that shows the minimum wage by state and states that were trying to pass local
laws to change the minimum wage. In North Carolina, the minimum wage is
currently $7.25 per hour – this is the Federal Minimum. In the District of
Columbia, the minimum is $8.25 per hour and is scheduled to move up to $11.50
per hour by July 2016. The author showed all of these rates to illustrate the
differences in minimum wages between the states. The states with the lowest
minimum wages were also the ones with the lowest cost of living.
Lowrey, Annie.
"Cities Advance Their Fight Against Rising Inequality." The New York Times. The New York Times, 06
Apr. 2014. Web. 12 Apr. 2014. <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/07/business/economy/cities-advancing-inequality-fight.html>.
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