None of My Business

None of My Business

It was late, I was grumpy, and the woman in front of me was buying cigarettes. I noticed the items in her cart: brand-name snacks, colas, and frozen foods. I looked at how she dressed, considered the carton of cigarettes she requested, and made a wager to myself that...
Boosting the Economy from the Bottom Up

Boosting the Economy from the Bottom Up

The minimum wage is $7.25. If it had kept up with inflation since 1968, minimum-wage workers would be earning $10.69 an hour today. During his State of the Union Address, President Barack Obama put a face on the growing chasm between the “haves” and...
A Recipe for a Sounder Diet

A Recipe for a Sounder Diet

Healthy food is expensive and telling people to eat organic, local food is elitist. Have you heard that argument before? It’s true. Healthy, organic, local food is expensive. Calorie for calorie, you get more for your money at a fast food drive-thru than at a...
A Plateful of Justice

A Plateful of Justice

When my father immigrated to the United States from Mexico in the mid-1980s, his first job was washing dishes at a Furr’s Fresh Buffet restaurant in New Mexico. It paid the state-mandated minimum wage of $2.90 per hour. My father sent a portion of his scant...

Inequality Is Hurting Us All

Inequality hurts us all. Imagine if you could go back 45 years to 1968. That year, after three decades of creative policy from President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal through President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society, the United States was one of the...