Political Quotes

“I think many of my colleagues feel very at home with this image, which is a reminder of a household name-- Ramona and her father. It is a great story written by Beverly Cleary. In fact, it is a prize-winning story, part of a series, and my favorite of the series, Ramona the Pest, was written in 1968. In 1968 and in this story Ramona's dad is struggling, along with his wife Dorothy--his name is Robert--to get by and keep the family together on a minimum wage job, which in 1968 paid $1.60 an hour. Today the minimum wage, if it had kept pace with inflation, would be $10.71 an hour. We know, many of us--and probably many of my colleagues who have read this story--that Robert and Dorothy Quimby are engaged in a quiet struggle to make ends meet. Even as Ramona is engaged in all kinds of antics and play, he is working as a grocery bagger at a local store. Ramona's mother is working too--an early example of a two-family household and two-income family. They are able to keep their family afloat on that minimum wage in 1968--$1.60 an hour in 1968. For millions of Americans who read Ramona's story today, the idea of a minimum wage enabling a family to stay afloat, keep a roof over their heads, and food on the table is a storybook fiction. It is very difficult today to believe that Robert Quimby, as a bagger in a grocery store, could enable his daughters, Ramona and her sister, to have the life they did then.…”