My first job was a minimum wage job. In fact, it was at this very newspaper. I worked for $2.30 cents an hour in the summer of 1976. My weekly paycheck showed gross earnings of about $92 a week.

It wasn’t much, but I was able to make an $85 a month car payment and pay $95 a month rent. I even had carrying-around money. I could afford gas for my car and the occasional lunch buffet at Ken’s Pizza. Keep in mind, gas was around 60 cents a gallon — on a bad day — and the lunch buffet was $1.99.

That same year, I moved to another newspaper and was paid a whopping $3.50 an hour. Not bad for a Claremore Junior College graduate attending Northeastern State University.

In the fall of 1976, I was still paying $85 a month for a car and my rent actually decreased to about $45 a month because I then had a roommate.

Times were good. So good in fact, I was able to pay $500 for necessary dental work out of my minimum wage bank account.

But it’s been nearly three decades since a minimum wage job could buy a place to live, a car to drive and out-of-pocket dental care. The reality is this, people already earning $7.25 an hour — the carrot Congress is dangling — can’t afford even minimal living standards as it is.

Ever escalating costs of living hurt more than the working poor. They are eroding America’s symbolic “middle class.” They are making us a nation of haves and have-nots.

What started out as a social adjustment has fallen short of the intended, now euphemistic, “living wage.” Minimum wage legislation has become more about gaining political collateral and less about raising the standard of living.

Just look at the facts.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, “the effect of the last minimum wage increase in 1996-97 has been completely eroded by inflation — $5.15 today is the equivalent of only $3.95 in 1995 — lower than the $4.25 minimum wage level before the 1996-97 increase.”

It’s no wonder nearly 85 percent of people support an increase in the minimum wage as shown in a recent Pew Research Center poll.

Since its inception in 1938, the minimum wage has played a vital role in raising the standard of living and working conditions. But inflation and growing corporate greed have taken a toll.

The government’s own fact machine reveals today’s minimum wage earner has less buying power than ever. According to U.S. Labor Department Statistics, 1976’s $2.30 was like earning $6. 46 an hour; today’s $5.15 when adjusted for inflation based on the consumer price index was valued at $4.75 10 years ago.

In today’s labor market, a minimum wage earner is lucky to find a 40-hour a week job making the minimum $5.15 an hour grossing $206 a week. The real downer comes when that wage earner realizes his 2007 paycheck will only buy him 70 percent of what the 1976 wage earner could afford.

So go figure. I mean literally figure. A quick survey of basic living expenses right here in Rogers County shows housing and transportation that cost approximately $200 a month 30 years ago, today cost $700 a month — a 250 percent increase. Compare those numbers to the income side: A minimum wage worker earned an average of $400 a month in 1976; today 2007, a minimum wage worker earns an average of $892 a month working full-time — a 125 percent increase.