Think Progress has an interesting post up about the White House staffers getting a raise while at the same time opposing an increase on the minimum wage:

This year the highest paid staffers in the White House – including Karl Rove, Dan Bartlett and Steven Hadley – got a cost-of-living adjustment of $4,200, boosting their total salary to $165,200.

Meanwhile, the White House is backing Congressional efforts to beat back a modest increase in the minimum wage for the lowest paid Americans for the first time since 1997. Here’s a press release issued today by Rep. George Miller (D-CA):

As Think Progress also pointed out last week, while Bush is boasting about a “growing economy”, wages have actually fallen:

Real wages have fallen since August 2003. The average worker’s real wages were twenty cents lower in June 2006 than they were in August 2003.

When we hear the economic news coming from the White House they go on about sales increasing, but they some how fail to mention that the sales that are increasing are in luxury items – i.e., the ones that rich people buy (boats, sea-dos, furs, etc). While they are out living the high life, middle America is struggling and that struggle is starting to make an enormous impact on our society as a whole.

John Aravosis had an interesting post yesterday talking about the increase in crime in the D.C. area. After reading it, I have been thinking a lot about it.

If you never saw the movie “A Clockwork Orange,” it’s about… well… I don’t even remember what it’s about, I saw it so long ago. All I remember from the movie was an incredibly graphic and violent scene of some thugs breaking into a woman’s home. The rest was so violent and nasty, it still sticks in my head some 30+ years later.

That is what Washington, DC is now becoming, a city of gratuitous and graphic violence. I’m serious, the city is dangerous folks. Visit or live here at your own peril.

I say this as someone who is rather an expert on DC crime. I got mugged a few years back, quite violently in front of my own apartment (8 o’clock at night, fully lit area, right by a 7-11 where all the cops hang out, on a really busy street) – none of that stopped two kids from jumping me from behind and trying to strangle me to death. They didn’t want my money, they just wanted to stop me from breathing. And for a while, they did.

His entire post deserves a really careful reading because it resembles more than just D.C., but the country as a whole. Last month, the FBI reported that crime is on the increase. This increase is synonymous with people struggling harder to live. Some give up and just go out and take extreme measures, while others feel they must resort to stealing in order to survive.

Now while people think that this is a situation limited to only certain rungs of the economic ladder, they are just misleading themselves. A perfect example lies in an article John linked to in his post:

Three assailants who cut the throat of an aspiring politician from Britain killed him and tried to rape his female companion early yesterday in the driveway of a Georgetown mansion, police reported, after the couple had returned from a night at the movies.

The victim, Alan Senitt, 27, a Jewish activist and volunteer for former Virginia governor Mark R. Warner, died at the scene, police said. The woman, whom police declined to identify, was not injured.

Within hours, D.C. police arrested four people in connection with one of the most brutal crimes in years on the affluent streets of Georgetown and said they were looking for possible links to other recent attacks in the city.

While they assailants may have come from the lower levels of our society, the victims did not. This is occurring not only in the capital of our nation, but also around the entire country. Here in the Cincinnati area, violent crimes and robberies are skyrocketing. Crimes that once seemed confined to the actual city are now spreading out into the wealthier suburbs. The first ten minutes of the news is robberies, rapes and murders everyday and this is from an area that was voted one of the best places to live 7 years ago.

With the current economic atmosphere of our nation, the problems are only going to get worse. Cities are going to start feeling the crunch of high fuel prices, especially as snow plowing season grows near. This means they will have to turn to the tax payers for more money or discontinue/limit public services. Once that happens, then you see decreases in after-school programs, bus transportation and manning levels for police and fire. All of these add to further problems within society as children turn to the streets because of a lack of extra-curricular activities and police become stressed from being over-worked.

Our society depends upon a delicate balance of monetary flow between all levels it contains. When the rich become more rich and the poor fall deeper into poverty then everyone hurts. The poor struggle to survive and turn to crime which ends up victimizing everyone, including the upper class. The only way we can prevent our nation from falling into a  “Sodom and Gomorrah” type of society is to ensure all citizens are properly cared for and the economic wealth of the world’s richest nation is spread out fairly.

The best place to start is an increase in minimum wage. More and more people are turning to a career in retail, fast food, or some other service related industry. Most of these jobs pay below the poverty level.  It also forces both parents in a household to hold down jobs and even work longer hours. These same companies are also the very ones that lobby to fight minimum wage increases.

With a dangerous decline in American unions, our nation risks becoming what it was in the late 1800’s, the time when unions were born. Workers will start putting in 14-18 hour days with little pay and a decrease in worker safety and rights. Bush is helping to lock this deal by limiting the government agencies that are made to specifically deal with these problems, in particular, the National Labor Relations Board. I posted about this on Saturday and linked to this very informative article on this problem:

The last thing America’s workers need is another economic kick in the groin, but the Bush labor board may soon deliver what could be its lowest blow yet.

In a series of pending cases known as Kentucky River, the Bush board could strip what remains of federal labor law protections from hundreds of thousands-perhaps millions-of workers whose jobs include even minor, incidental or occasional supervisory duties. The pending cases involve charge nurses in a hospital and a nursing home and lead workers in a manufacturing plant, but these workers could be just the tip of the iceberg.

The Bush National Labor Relations Board is easily the most anti-worker labor board in history, but even against this sorry backdrop, the scope of what they now are contemplating is breathtaking.

We must face it – this problem affects every single one of us. The only way it doesn’t is if you are planning on leaving America. If you live in a $2 million dollar house or a run-down, section 8 apartments, you can be affected by this. The crimes and adverse effects do not discriminate between black and white, rich or poor, Republican or Democrat. This is the very reason we must all act now and support an increase on the minimum wage. After that we must fight for a more fair tax system that mandates everyone pays fairly.