I Love My Country..but Fear My Government

Not too long ago, I received an email about a bill that was in The House of Representatives regarding the minimum wage and finally increasing it. Now this is important to me since I live in New Hampshire where we have no State minimum wage, but rely on federal guidelines, so an increase here is long, long overdue. While the cost of living is starting to rise to dangerous proportions here in NH, we are still working for peanuts. Mind you, there is an upside, we truly believe in the motto "Live Free or Die", and we take it very seriously. At the same time, how can we live free if we cannot afford to live here at all?

So, back to what I was telling you, there was a bill that had passed the House that would raise the minimum wage over the next FIVE years, but the catch was, you guessed it, a boon for the rich. The proposal included yet another attempt by the Republicans to eliminate the estate tax so that they can keep all their money, and we can remain poor (Working Families Party, 2006). Now, our current financial status in this country has already just about eliminated the middle class and has more than doubled the amount of people who live below the national poverty level. Never fear, at least a third of these people owns their own homes and has a car and other goodies like electronics and nice clothes (U.S. Census Bureau, 2000). Those that are actually poor have many of these material things, so we are still the richest country in the world, materialistically anyway. The price the average family pays is far more than monetary, the loss of the American Dream that many of us have felt at some point is far more substantial to the decay of our country's families that a lack of money.