me being published running my mouth

I'm already seeing where I could take the 100% opposite view from the one I've taken here.. but heck... I got published!

(10.27.2011 - it appears that the link is gone. While I try to retrieve the full thread, here is a comment I posted, in response to a comment on the post, that gives a gist of the argument I was making.)

Hi Bob and dtafs! Thanks for jumping in! Great food for thought you’ve offered.

Before I get too wrapped up in that head of lettuce touched by your 7 cent Mexican, or wonder what strata of workers deserve to eat in restaurants every now and then, I’d like to revisit my original point. Calling the Madrona affordable housing is wrong.

The Madrona is a housing project. For what it is, a housing project for near homeless addicts, its wonderful news, and yes, dtafts, on that merit alone it is something to be commended. But to paraphrase what Bob said so well in his comment on Dan’s original posting, there should be a difference between affordable housing and housing projects.

I’ll refer you to this piece about the Madrona, written by Anna Griffin for the O. http://www.solaroregon.org/about/news_folder/madrona-studios-opening-most-worthwhile-part-of-portlands-rose-quarter-renewal You’ll notice that she never calls this ‘affordable housing’: “To move into the Madrona Studios, a rectangular box of an old Ramada Inn on Northeast Weidler, you must be homeless or nearly there.”

Where I get my tuft in a ruffle is when we lump hardworking, fully employed people who happen to be doing jobs that rest on the ‘no degree required’ scale in with recovering addicts and expect them to knead their soiled hats in their hands and whisper ‘thank you, sirs, may I have another?”

There should be a benefit to working.I am having a hard time fathoming that we actually disagree on that point.

Bob, you’ve provided a handy calculator and answered my direct question. You consider $8.73/ hr. a living wage for a single person in Portland, Ore. With 47% of take home toward housing, and a $53/week food budget. Really? Are you kidding me? That’s a lot of fast food down the gullet, and bound to up that medical cost pretty quick, don’t you think? Well, heck, on that scale, my 11.50/hr. worker really is earning a kings wage!

Apparently, though, that princely sum doesn’t extend to being allowed to dine alongside their betters or take a few days rest and travel once a year? (for the record, Bob, there is quite a continuum you’ve quoted between dining in a decent restaurant every now and then and the luxury of keeping domestics)

At what point does a person ‘need’ a vacation, dtafs? At what point do they deserve one? I have to let you know, poor folk do eat out, not as often from white tablecloths, but cost increases do affect them as well. And while you may not worry too much about those upper crusts who can afford to have their manors tended by crisply uniformed staff, I think they’re valid humans, so I tend to ‘worry’ about them, too.

So where we seem to diverge is on the realistic implementation and effects of ‘living wage.’ The question is one that is by no means settled, so on that point I’m gonna do my homework and come back for more real soon.

But again I would like to point out that we are constrained to the realities we live in; those being that we are in the midst of a recession and that wages are not likely to rise for a while. I’ll also note that Oregon’s minimum wage is already tied to rise with inflation.

Ultimately, though, the main point is just this, $11.50 an hour should afford a better quality of life than a housing project.