How much do you make per year? How much do you make per month? Do you consider yourself a member of the upper class, middle class, or lower working class? Do you earn enough to pay for the necessities that come with life in America?
I am asking you these questions because there is a major discrepancy between what the upper and middle class is able to earn and what is available for us hard working lower class Americans. Many people will say that hard work pays and they are right to an extent. Lets face it, middle and upper class Americans make drastically more than the lower working class can achieve. The attitude prevails that if you work hard in life you will be rewarded. If you keep your eye on the prize that is the American dream you can be successful in this country of opportunity, but contrary to popular belief not everyone in this country can be successful. Not every one can go to college and earn a better life for themselves. In a perfect world the opposite would be true, but for many working class Americans this simply is not so!
Not everyone is smart enough to make it through the many hoops and mazes of education that enable them to join the classes of priviledge that everyone strives for in life. Many who are not capable of this choose to work hard and earn what is available to them. They work in jobs that are hazardous and literally backbreaking and an overwhelming number of these souls get paid a penance for the blood and sweat they leave on the job site each day. I sat down and calculated the average cost of living in America for just the bare necessities which are as follows-Home, food, medicines, energy costs, communications expenses, and transportation costs. I came up with what I think is a very conservative $1600 a month. That being said, what would you say is the average take home pay of a lower class individual? I myself have been a member of the lower working class for almost 20 years and to be totally truthful I have held many jobs and very few paid more than $250-300 per week which is well below my conservative figure of what it costs to live in America. I know that many of you will say that this figure is much higher for you or that you consider yourself a member of the working class and you make more than this, and I say "Good for you!" You are lucky, here is your cookie, now choke on it!
The simple fact is that lower class hardworking Americans are a large part of the heart and soul that makes America work. Many of you successful folks would not be so priviledged with out the existence of lower class Americans. In other words, without us this country would have failed many years ago. We serve you your food when you go out to eat, we mow your lawns, we do the work that you simply would not do unless you were forced to. Many of you work each day from the comfort of a luxury chair on rollers, never even coming close to even breaking a nail, and a great many of you really don't do much of anything at all that would be called physical work and you get paid extremely well for it while somewhere there is a guy doing hard manual labor literally sweating and bleeding his life away for a disgustingly low rate of pay that does not even cover his meager cost of living. Face it, with out us grunts many of you would be in some deep doo-doo! Can you imagine if you didn't have that shiny car you park in your garage or drive way each night? Can you imagine what it would be like to wonder where your next meal was coming from after having to pay for medicine you couldn't really afford in the first place? Can you imagine living in a crime saturated neighborhood filled with leaky roofs and drafty doors and windows that drive up the costs of heating and cooling? Can you imagine living out of your car or out of homeless missions due to circumstances beyond your control? This is what many of us face day in day out with no prospect of relief in the future.
America needs to wake up and change the status quo. America needs to step back and look at the ills of society and consider what is possible and try to tilt the scales a bit in better favor of the working class. After all, where would America be with out the lower class? It is time to stop walking on the backs of the lower class and in the name of fairness and morality do something to change this! Did you know that things like food and energy costs do not even figure into what the government considers a living wage? I don't care who you are or where you are from this is just shameful! America needs to recognize that the lower class is the lifeblood of this economy and its time for those who have so much stand up for those who have so little and have no real opportunity to obtain a real living.