I don't know about you, but I have a lot of guilt. It manifests itself in all sorts of ways: some days it's simply from being white and not obese, while other days I'm consumed by the fact that I have not one, but two working legs, and a father who doesn't beat or rape me. I wasn't wrongly imprisoned, sold into slavery, tortured for information, or beaten within an inch of my life because I'm a homosexual. You get the idea.
Sometimes the myriad manifestations of sorrow and misfortune feel so immense, I can only believe we're in Purgatory, a cruel intergalactic experiment, or perhaps are being punished for a past life's transgressions. Maybe we're just star-dust hurtling into oblivion without pupose. Hard to say.
But I think these daily realizations – and repulsion – to my own privilege and my straight-up celestial luck are complicated further when said misfortune seems to be stemming from the government, not, for instance, a cruel alien species with a taste for sadism. It seems extra unfair. In a country that touts itself as a land of good n' plenty, of milk and honey and cups running over ... our country's federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hourfeels like sanctioned sadness.
Washington State holds the record for the juiciest state minimum wage, blowing up people's bank statements at $9.32 per hour. It's not pretty people.
But always the question remains – can someone live on minimum wage? And if you lost your job (like millions have) and had to head into the fray and work for $7.25 a hour ... what would happen to life as you knew it?
Wonder no more. The New York Times has released what I like to call, "An Interactive Calculator of Sorrow" (i.e. tally up your expenses and see how much debt you'll be in.) Check it out here.
