FOOD: Here's a holiday travesty
This week, in the days before our usual holiday season of largesse and excess, comes news that employees of Walmart are gathering food donations for fellow low-paid “associates.” Included in these reports is the fact that the worth of six members of the Walton family equals that of the bottom 40 percent of Americans! What a travesty: that one of the wealthiest families in the world literally starves its employees! I am sure that just a few of the Waltons’ many billions could adequately pay the Walmart workforce.
I noticed also that Walmart is spending to advertise to convince customers what great opportunities are provided to its workforce. And McDonald’s, another company with a vast underpaid workforce, is advising employees who don’t have enough to eat to cut their food into small pieces and eat slowly to blunt their hunger (as well as supplement their meager incomes by taking advantage of community assistance programs)!
The huge gap in wealth between rich and poor in the United States now exceeds that of the infamous Gilded Age before the Great Depression, with no end in sight. After decades of Republican control of its legislature, Idaho now leads the nation in the percentage of minimum wage workers. Idahoans earn an average of $11,000 per year less than workers in the surrounding states. Our legislature has so far refused to accept federal help in funding expanding Medicaid coverage for the uninsured poor, costing the taxpaying citizens of Idaho $60,000,000 per year for expensive emergency room medical care for the indigent. What a shame that working people cannot provide adequately for their families’ needs!
It’s easy to feel powerless in the face of ideological stonewalling by our legislators. Yes, we can give generously, as we Idahoans do, to food banks and fundraisers. We as citizens also have the power of the initiative process and ballot box.
Right now go to RaiseIdaho.org, read the instructions and download a petition to put on the November 2014 ballot the proposal to raise Idaho’s minimum wage incrementally over three years. (The proposed statute is included as part of the petition.) Gather 12 signatures at the next holiday party you attend. Most people you ask will readily sign it. Call me at 755-9590 for more information. And the rest of you, sign the petition when you see us at the next parade. You can do something to change the system!
PAULA NEILS
Hauser