Friday, January 3, 2014

TruthDig: Opinion: Sonali Kolhatkar: The Year of The Low-Wage Worker: Closing The Income Gap in America


This post was originally posted at The New Democrat on Blogger

Before you go about addressing the income gap in America or what others call income inequality, you have to first know why we have it. And no it is not because we have a capitalist system. There are socialist state-owned economies in other countries that have a good deal of rich and poor as well. It is just that those countries poor tend to make up most of those countries. North Korea perfect example of that and Cuba lets say ten-years ago as well before they moved to start privatizing parts of their economy.

And the reason why for our income gap in America has to do with lack of education and opportunity in our low-income communities. A big reason why both parties are so interested in education reform. And of course if you come from a middle especially upper-middle family or a wealthy family, you’ll most likely have all the educational opportunities that you’ll need to do well in life. And then it will become about you and what you are able to do with those opportunities. So the lack of education with our low-income workforce is the major factor for our income gap in this country.

I’m all for raising the minimum wage in America substantially and I’ve already made that clear in several posts on this blog alone. Hell, I would go further than that and even have employers who pay low-wages be charged a payroll tax that goes to pay for Medicaid, Food Assistance, Public Housing and Welfare Insurance as well. Because with the low-wages that they pay the cost of living costs go from the employer to average Joe and Mary taxpayer instead. Which is very unfair to Americans who work very hard just to pay their bills in this country.

But we can’t close the income gap in America until we address the cause of the income gap. Which is another gap that is called the education gap. And come up with an education system that guarantees every American no matter their parents income with the opportunity to get a good education in life. As well as an educational and job training system for our low-skilled workforce as well so they can get themselves good jobs.

Otherwise until we do things like this and start proposing and passing policies like this either at the federal or state level or a combination of both, instead of using these issues just to get voters to the polls or make the other party look bad or something, we will always be having these discussions and debates. Why do we have so few rich and many poor and why are middle class wages dropping. And what we do about the high cost of living in America.