The Walking Dead 10

I am well aware that I am working for an unjust, low wage, considering the kind of work that I do. Fourteen dollars an hour is too low, actually, for any kind of work. Why? Because it is not a living wage. I suppose that we are doing our much better paid employers a favour by accepting from them such poor and scant remuneration for services rendered. Why, if they had to pay us enough to live on, they might themselves end up having to sacrifice some of their perks and benefits, and then, oh, the sacrifices they would have to make! Let's first of all calculate how much a just and decent raise would cost my dear bosses. If twenty dollars an hour would be the bottom margin for a living wage, and there are around 100 peer support workers working an average of around fifty hours a month (I work way more than that, but this is the calculated average), then we would be setting back the health care provider a whopping $360,000 a year. They say that they can't afford to pay us that without having to make cuts in other essential programs and services. But when you consider that this cipher is also the approximate annual income, before perks and bonuses, for our CEO's and administrators, then perhaps if each one would accept a cut of say, fifty thousand a year, or so, then of course we would all come out even, we would get our raise and they might have to make a few small sacrifices. But, it seems, that when you already have more than enough money, no sacrifice feels small, and you are going to get even more anxious and fearful over one misplaced dime in your holdings, than in the very thought that the excess that you are getting paid is creating hardship and want for some of your contracted workers, namely us. Perhaps the more reasonable sacrifice would be for us, the underpaid, to quit whining, suck it up, and feel honoured, or at leas flattered, that our poor pay and the hardships that it inflicts on us will be also helping our wealthy benefactors to sleep well at night. They will know that because we are underpaid, they can still enjoy investing in that holiday home in the Bahamas or wherever, or they can install not second best but the most top-notch security systems in their luxury homes. They can still afford that second Mercedes Benz, and maybe even a Lamborghini for their teenage son. They won't have to let go of their second Filipina nanny, and they will still enjoy dining out in the finest restaurants, going on luxury cruises and vacations, and clothing themselves in fashion threads from the best shops in town. See what our little sacrifice of a lousy wage does for our bosses? We are helping to keep them in the style and quality of life to which they feel entitled, and oh, what that does for their self-esteem. And if their self-esteem is good, then their mood will be improved, and if their mood is better, then they probably won't visit on us any further hardship. At least not this year!