Good.
It looks as if Oak Park officials are about to enact a living wage ordinance.
At a recent meeting, the Oak Park Village Board approved the first reading of an ordinance that would establish a minimum wage of $12 an hour.
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The living wage would apply to all village workers.
The $12 hourly wage also would be in effect for contractors that provide the village with services of more than $25,000 a year. The wage would be phased in over the next two years.
Once again, Oak Park is a leader in doing what is right.
But, we shouldn’t break our arm patting ourselves on the back.
While we all refer to this effort as a living wage ordinance, is it really a living wage?
A salary of $12 an hour is a weekly salary of $480 a week, or $24,960 a year.
The U.S. Census Bureau sets the poverty threshold for 2015 at $24,036 annually for a family of two adults and two children.
So, the difference between the poverty threshold of 2015 and Oak Park’s so-called living wage of 2016 is $924 a year, or $17.77 a week. That’s a rather slim cushion.
You call that living?
Poverty in the United States is – or should be – a scandal.
The Census Bureau states that in 2014, 46.7 million Americans, 14.8 percent of the population, lived in poverty.
Oak Park’s contemplation of raising the minimum wage to $12 an hour is newsworthy because it is out of the ordinary, perhaps even rare.
And that is depressing.
That it is difficult to have a minimum wage that is only a few dollars above poverty level is not cause for celebration.
Raising wages is a necessity. And as Oak Park residents, we should be proud that our elected officials are addressing the issue.
Oak Park can’t solve the problem of living wages that aren’t. This is a national problem. Is anyone paying attention to the issue of poverty in America?
In this election year, I hear much shouting about the plight of the middle class. And rightly so. The middle class is being squeezed and insufficiently compensated to boot.
But there is scarcely a whisper about the poor.
They are Americans, too.
Paul Sassone is a freelance columnist for Pioneer Press.