People who think raising the minimum wage is a bad idea should try living on it for a week or two....

If the minimum wage had kept pace with the cost of living, it would be over $20 an hour now. It is less than half that.

It's time we stopped blaming the people at the bottom for their situation and put the blame where it truly belongs on the banks and the corporations who spent millions gaming the system so they could take billions out of the economy. The repeal of Glass-Steagall was directly responsible for the crash of 2008.

In the 50's, corporations paid 90% of the federal budget. Today, that burden falls on the working class and many of our largest corporations are stashing their profits offshore and paying no taxes at all. Some, like GE, are collecting billions in tax subsidies.

Some of my republican friends say that what we need is a "fair tax." By that, they mean everybody pays the same percent. While that sounds good in principle, in practice it takes more money out of the pockets of the working class and puts even more money into the pockets of the one percent.

What those at the top of the ladder keep missing is that our present economic inequity is now worse than the inequity that caused the French revolution. And that didn't turn out to well for that one percent.