Equal Pay For Equal Work

Why is it that after so many years of fighting for equality, in many places women still make less money than men?  Is this really fair?  Of course not!  Equality means equal pay for equal work. 

In 1964 Congress passed a law that stated that people couldn’t be discriminated against in the workplace because of race or GENDER!  Discrimination includes women making less money than men.

It’s been 45 years and yet women are still making only about 77 cents per 1 dollar that men make.  This is an extremely significant difference in the long run.  Women are supposed to be considered equal to men and there are plenty of women doing jobs as well or better than the men in their field yet they go home with less money in your pocket every day.  Over a lifetime this could end up losing some women up to 2 million dollars!  That’s a lot of money.

In today’s world when women are single mothers, supporting themselves through college, taking care of elderly relatives or even the everyday worker, they need their deserved money!  Hard working women often need to support themselves and families and need to be making the same income as men in the same profession.

If a woman is doing just as well as a man and working just as hard as a man in the same job, she should be making an equal amount of money.  Equal pay for equal work.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/10/09/the_wage_gap/

Against Issue 3

While sitting at the 1^st preseason Cavaliers game of the year, I was happily enjoying watching the Cavs annihilate Charlotte when, during a time out, an advertisement comes on ‘Q-Tube’ (the big screen at the Q) advocating for issue 3.  This definitely put a damper on my mood during the game because I am against issue 3.

This spurred a conversation, a short conversation of course because the Cavaliers came back onto the court shortly after, about the issue.  My brother is for it because he thinks it will give more jobs to people in the recession and for those lucky few who actually win at the casino will be much wealthier. 

However, I disagree.  True it will give more jobs, but there are many negatives to a casino.  People who enjoy gambling, those types of people who go to Vegas occasionally and spend all the money they have on them, well how much worse would that be if those people could do that every day?  If a casino is just down the block from those same people, they’d be much more likely to go out weekly or even daily and waste all their money.  This is of course really bad for those people, but you may think it’s their fault and their problem.  Well there are other reasons why issue 3 is so bad. 

People believe that bringing casinos to Ohio will make more money for the state in taxes and raise money for Ohio; however, the percent proposed to use for taxes is far lower than in other states, which would result in the casino owners and operators making loads of money while Ohio is left with a minimal profit.  Issue 3 also stops other casino gaming such as “casino nights” offered in churches and charitable organizations.  Another fact that many people may not know is that 2 out of the 4 properties owned by out of state casino developers. 

Voting yes to this issue will create a constitutional monopoly for Ohio casino owners.  We’ve already rejected it many times, so please continue and maybe they’ll just give up already!

The Environment

My family and I are huge advocators for the idea of going green and helping the environment.  I learned much of it from my mom, who always makes sure I recycle everything that can possibly be recycled.  And why not when it’s just as easy as throwing the item away but does so much more to benefit the earth.  Yet there are so many people who don’t recycle everyday materials.

The amount of waste in the world now is disgusting.  There is so much trash lying out in numerous landfills and so much more lying around the streets.  A large amount of this trash could have been recycled but was carelessly thrown out instead. 

So why doesn’t the government take charge and try to help protect the world from the people living in it?  Celebs have made it an “in thing” to go green and many people are fallowing in their footsteps, but sadly it isn’t enough.  The world is still cluttered with trash.  So why doesn’t the government do more to regulate the trash being thrown away into landfills and cluttering up our communities?  It may seem like a small thing that the government should waste it’s time with but it really is an important issue.

For those of us who have seen Walle, we have seen the horrible planet that is our future home and I must say it was a pretty disgusting, trash filled sight.  The world would be chaotic if it were to end up like that, so putting it into that perspective one can easily see the importance of going green and recycling.

Porfessional Sports Are Overrated

It’s sad but true, and I’m not sure whether there’s anything the government can do about it, but it’s an issue that’s very prevalent now.   

I’d assume that everyone reading this has heard of Lebron James, the “star” of the Cleveland Cavaliers.  A basketball god, some say.  However, I doubt that many people know his annual salary.  Lebron James makes $15,779,912 every year that he plays for the Cavs.  And that’s not even the highest salary paid to a player in the NBA.  The highest paid NBA player is Tracy McGrady, of the Huston Rockets.  He makes $23,239,561 per year.  Over 23 million dollars a year!  That’s probably more money than I’ll see in my entire life and he makes it in just one year!  And for what, dribbling a ball down the court, dodging some other muscular men and trying to shoot the ball into the basket and missing half the time?  Well if people are willing to pay $100 dollars to see him do it, then why not?  To be fair, the average salary of an NBA player is a mere $5.5 million.

Now let’s look at the average salary of a teacher.  Through research I found that the average salary for a high school teacher is around $45,000, over 5 million less than the average salary of an NBA player. 

Does this mean that to Americans, professional athletes are more important than teachers?  We care so much about entertainment that we’re willing to pay professional athletes millions of dollars to dribble a ball or shoot a puck or run around some bases but we don’t care enough about our education to spare our educators even half of what we pay the athletes?  Is that really fair?  Why is it that our culture is okay with paying anywhere from 30 to 300 dollars to see the game live but won’t invest it in higher education?  Where would we be in this world without our education?  Back in the times of the Neanderthals that’s where.  So if I turn to you and ask who Grady Sizemore is, could you tell me?  Probably.  But what if I ask you the name of one of the most prominent educators at Harvard, do you think you could answer that?  I’m going to assume not.  What did Grady ever do to further help our growing world?

Now I hope, as a reader, you don’t think that I am an anti-sports activist, quite the opposite actually.  My family loves the Cleveland Cavaliers.  My brothers and I inherited our love of basketball from our father and because of that we have had season tickets for at least the past 6 seasons.  I love the sport and watching the games and because of that, my family pays money to have these season tickets every year.  Today’s community cares so much about entertainment that they, or should I say we, are willing to pay as much money as it takes to see it.  So no, I don’t see myself boycotting professional sports in the near future just because they’re too expensive, but I will stay true to my belief that professional athletes are paid too much and other people working other professions, like teachers, should receive higher salaries.

Animal Testing

“Hello, I’m Elle Woods and I’m here to speak for those who can’t speak for themselves.” Have you ever heard this before? This is a quote from Legally Blonde where Elle Woods, the main character of the movie, was trying to free her dog’s mother from an animal testing laboratory. And in case you don’t already know, the movie does have a happy ending where the animals are all freed from the laboratory because Elle Woods was able to get enough signatures from government officials in order to get her bill passed. So why is it that this isn’t happening in real life? Look around an animal testing lab and on any given day you’re likely to see protesters against the testing of animals, so why is it that there is nothing done to prevent it?

Is it really worth the lives of 100s of rabbits, mice, birds, monkeys, and even dogs and cats, in order to find the right shade of lipstick or the perfect smoothness in mascara. If you care so much about the perfect this and that why not put it on yourself rather than testing it on animals that have done nothing to deserve this? Animal testing should not be legal for reasons that just seem inhumane. Animals don’t live in the wild wearing mascara, lip-gloss, and hairspray, so why do people force it upon them? The footage of the testing is disgusting. Hearing the animal’s screams in pain is just cruel. They experience pain that we shutter to just imagine.

When we feed animals drugs that we would want to administer to people, they reacts differently. Why? Because they aren’t people and for that reason shouldn’t be testing the drugs that we want to use. When the animal is in pain, it can’t tell us how much it hurts on a scale of 1-10, all it can do is scream and cry out. Why do people force cigarettes into the mouths of monkeys and dogs to find out effects that they already know?

Now I don’t want to sound too crazy like a PETA advocate, but I don’t know how else to completely explain how ridiculous and disgusting animal testing is. With modern day technology there are better ways to test makeup and drugs and candies than this. So why does it exist legally at all? It’s cruel. If you don’t believe me, do check out PETA. Yes, they’re a bit over the top, but they get the point across.

Minimum Wage Laws

Does anyone really know what minimum wage laws are?  People talk about minimum wage jobs all the time, but what is it really?  Federal law says that minimum wage is $7.25 per hour.  However, states make up their own minimum wage laws.  We Ohioans are lucky.  Our minimum wage laws give us above minimum wage, a whole $0.05 giving us a minimum wage of $7.30 per hour.  Some very lucky states such as Washington give the very high minimum wage of $8.55 per hour. 

However, on the negative side, there are many states that have minimum wages below federal.  There are even 5 states with no minimum wage laws: Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, and South Carolina.  I would highly recommend against moving there to anyone who expects to only make minimum wage for the rest of his or her life. 

But is that really fair?  To have minimum wage laws that are different from federal laws?  I personally don’t think so.  Federal law should determine the minimum wage laws, especially because some of the people receiving minimum wage are students who have their first job and can’t control which state they live in and are forced to accept the minimum wage of the state that they are living in, whether it be higher or lower than then federal law.  I’m pretty sure that the majority of the people living in states who have minimum wage laws that are higher than federal would want to keep it that way, but what about the people in the 9 states with minimum wage laws below federal or no minimum wage.  And if you add Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands that makes 12.  Is it really fair that how much money you could make from a minimum wage job depends on what state you live in?  I think not.

Are Certain Cities Spending Their Money Wisely?

I recently learned about another issue that hits close to home, the financial issues in the city of Shaker Heights.  Now, I do not live in Shaker Heights, but I have a lot of connections to it.  I lived there until I was 11, my brother and his family live there now, I skate and go to school there and also live in a neighboring city, so things that happen in Shaker affect me too. 

Upon entering Thornton Park, the Shaker Heights ice skating rink, at 6:30am Tuesday morning, I learned from my skating coach that one of the women in the upstairs office who handled getting my finger prints so I would be able to work there was told she had to retire after 30 years of working there.  She is 60 years old and could have had a few more years of work ahead of her.  I decided to take this information and take a better look online for myself and this is what I found: “There will be 13 furlough days for non-bargaining unit employees the second Friday in each pay period. Employees will not work that day and will receive a reduction of 10% of their pay for the balance of the year and I’ll contribute an equivalent amount from my pay to share in the reduction.”  Along with “Through the elimination of 20 positions through lay-offs and job attrition, reductions in health care costs, frozen department budgets and wage freezes…”

20.  They eliminated 20 positions.  And to the jobs that were kept, people are being forced to only work 4 day weeks, 4 days worth of money rather than 5 is a big difference for people with children that they have to provide for.  Now this would be totally understandable if Shaker Heights were considered one of the poor suburbs and to some it may be, but if you search its statistics online you’ll find out that it really isn’t one of the more poor suburbs of Cleveland.  So why does the City’s council have to continue to fire people and cut back other peoples’ hours?  Because a lot of the money is going to less important things. 

Laurel recently received very nice new computers that were paid for by the city of Shaker Heights.  Are they nice to have and use?  Yes.  Were they more necessary than someone keeping their job?  Not in my opinion and hopefully not in the opinions of others.  If Shaker is so poor that they have to let people go, cut back work weeks, and even close their city pool a week early, then how can they afford nice new computers for a private school?  My personal opinion is that they should reconsider their budgeting and take some money out of what they would use to buy computers for a school such as Laurel, and instead use that money for more important things like keeping people who need jobs and giving them their full work week.