Our Contract with Ourselves

A lot gets said about what our societal contract ought to be. I believe it's best spelled out by the simple phrase "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Many confuse this statement as a guarantee of happiness but it's the pursuit that's guaranteed, not the happiness. So, in other words, you ought to get to:

1. Live
2. Be free
3. And be able to chase your dreams

Now, let's apply this simple math to a practical analysis of the minimum wage. I think we can generally agree that if a family (mother and father) work a solid work week, they ought to be able to bring home enough bacon to support themselves and a reasonably sized family. I won't go into details on what that means. I'm not that friggen smart.

Anyway, the basic needs of this example family are:

• Shelter
• Food
• Transportation
• Clothing
• Education

So, to figure out what a "minimum wage" needs to be, wouldn't you simply figure out what these things would cost per month and divide that amount by the number of hours we believe is fair that this example family ought to be working?

I don't know what that number comes out to be but I can promise you, in Chicago, it isn't whatever the hell Minimum Wage is current set to.

To be able to pursue happiness, one must be able to provide hope for their children. That means they ought to be able to feed, cloth and shelter them. That means we ought to provide them with proper education so they can grow out of poverty from generation to generation. Our founding fathers believed in fairness. I think a pragmatic analysis of what that means when applied to the real earnings of the lower class in our society is in order. Pulling a number out of our ass and calling it a minimum wage, like our politicians have done over the years, ain't getting it done.

In some future post I'll discuss how I believe we ought not provide low income rental housing but rather low income loans for home ownership. That ought to be a good long one too...