Today the minimum wage went up by seventy cents. Adjusted for inflation, that means that workers who earn the minimum today, are no better off than workers who earned it in the 1950’s. Then again, organized labor has never been a weaker entity than it is now.

There are serious income problems in America; however, they aren’t exclusive problems concerning the poor. Next to seniors, the federal government spends the most money on programs to help the poor get a leg up in society, find jobs, educate toddlers, and even provide food and healthcare, than any other social demographic. The government sees to it that people living in despair have a glimpse of opportunity.

An issue, I think, is in the lower income brackets that make too much money for aid but not enough to afford basic benefits. It is here that you find many of the 47 million without health insurance; it is here that you find the equally high number of underinsured people. It is not only a demographic populated by people working service jobs or retail, it is also a demographic that includes many young and highly educated people who are encumbered with debt and trying to start their careers.

We can make an easy example of such a person, made up from scratch, to fit our model. Janet graduated from college in 2005 with a degree in Art History. Janet works as a docent at a city art museum 36 hours a week. Because she is considered a part-time employee, she is not entitled to benefits, however she is paid a salary of $24,000 a year.

She works in a smaller city, like Cleveland, and is able to pay her rent ($1000 a month, utilities included). She has $15,000 in educational debt and wants to get her masters so she can get a full-time position, but right now, can’t afford it and doesn’t have the time. In order to afford health insurance, she works part-time three nights a week at the Gap, at 8 bucks an hour. She has a cataclysmic health insurance policy that costs her $3,000 dollars a year but no dental or visual benefits. She has an older car that costs her $1500.00 a year in insurance and about a $1000.00 a year in maintenance.

She has no savings, pension, or job protection. However she is in reasonably good health and is a fine worker. If you add up her expenses Janet is living on a shoestring budget but with some careful planning and by avoiding extravagance, she is able to get by. She has absolutely no fiscal mobility if something happens with her health or if she loses her job.

Nobody would say that she isn’t a hard worker or that her work was not beneficial to the community; but Janet is saddled with a fairly large debt and is getting no benefit from the money she is putting into her healthcare “plan” other than a degree of security that if hit by a bus, she will be covered. If she was able to purchase a comprehensive plan from her employer, even at the same cost as her cataclysmic plan, she gladly would do it, and she would gladly pay into a pension plan or a 403B, but she is currently prohibited. If the government offered a health plan she would likely take it.

Though she is not considered poor her quality of life is. She doesn’t travel and looks for ways to socialize with people at home rather than out and looks for ways to save money. When invited to a bachelorette party a few weeks ago in Philadelphia, she didn’t go, because she couldn’t afford to travel there and rent a hotel with her other friends from college because she had to go and pay for a regular appointment with her physician.

My point with Janet’s story is not how bad off she is – because she isn’t – but just how normal her experience may seem to many of you: there is a banality to her experience that many of you may identify with. She is not destitute, but she hardly has a high quality of life and has absolutely no sense of security. She is a hard worker and has done well to make her way in the world but could use more in the way of opportunity so she could access better healthcare and have more disposable income to save or even, to spend. When we consider investing in our future, it seems obvious that hard working people like Janet, deserve a little help, not in terms of a handout, but in terms of a government investment in their future.