Congratulations to anybody making minimum wage (well, I wish you were making more, but you know what I mean) for the raise you’re getting today: a bump of 70 cents, up to $7.25 an hour. That’s, like, 10.5%, which sounds good. Of course, that whole percentage thing was invented by the rich folks to make the peasants think they were being treated fairly. You know, where everybody in the company gets, say, a 3% raise, so it must be “fair,” since everybody’s being treated equally. As if somebody making $100,000 getting a $3,000 raise is “equal” to somebody making $17,000 a year (which is close to a buck more than the “new improved” minimum wage) getting a $510 raise. Still, when it comes to pay, more is always better than less.

Back when I dropped out of college the first (or was it the second?) time to get out into the “real” world, and worked in a foundry, I think I was making $6.35 an hour by the time I quit and went back to school (I was, of course, destined to drop out yet again). I had more actual money then than I do now (of course, I was also working 68 hours a week, so there was a lot of OT in there). My rent was $90 a month, cable was $8, gas was about a buck and a half a gallon (not that it mattered, since my Chevette never seemed to work), and I hadn’t acquired a taste for expensive beer yet (I just had to pound quite a few down so I could pass out by 9:00 or so, in order to get up and get to work by 4 AM). I was too damn exhausted all the time to spend any money. Ah, those were the days.

Thankfully, I didn’t have any kids or anything. I don’t know how people with families manage to work so many hours. At least I was able to work all in one place and it was a union job, so I got overtime and benefits. If I’d had to go from one minimum wage job to another one, where my only “benefit” was a free happy meal, I’d have been pretty miserable. And “uniquely American,” of course.

Oh well, time to head out to face the day.