To the Editor,
The $15 minimum wage is a realistic goal and a step in the right direction in Athens. This demand represents more than a higher pay requirement. It is about directly tackling the massive inequality that permeates American society, attacking a system that redistributes wealth from the lowest part of our society and sends it toward the top of the economic pyramid, and a way to assail the dominance of the elite in our nation.
In 2009, the Census Bureau recorded the largest amount of people living in poverty in 51 years and the number living in deep poverty reached a record high. As George Packer writes in his article “The Broken Contract” in the journal Foreign Affairs, “between 1979 and 2006 the poorest American incomes increased by 11 percent while the incomes of the top one percent grew by 256 percent.” In 2007, CEOs earned more than four hundred times as much as their lowest paid employee.
The reason for such vast inequalities in wealth is that those at the top are stealing from those at the bottom. Safety nets for the desperate and poor are dismantled so that massive tax breaks can be given to the rich. Between 2008 and 2010, major corporations such as GE and Exxon paid negative taxes. They got money back from the government. Employees are paid as little as possible to reach record profit margins.
This is a fight over power, over democracy and over justice.
Kyle Tussing is a student at Ohio University.
