Fare increase impedes struggling students

For many community college students, maintaining a job to pay bills while going to school to get an education can be a difficult task. More than 90% of Metro riders are minorities and from lowincome households, according to the LA Times, and many Pierce College students who can’t afford a car or to be more frugal with their spending use the metro to get to campus.

Increasing the metro fares would put extra strain on students who rely on the metro.

On Monday Sept. 15, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority rolled out a fare hike to all of its metro busses, subway and light rail lines that increased the fares from $1.50 to $1.75 one-way and from $5 to $7 for a single-day pass. This fare hike comes at a time when multiple new rail project construction is set to begin and the MTA itself is operating in a budget deficit, according to the LA Times.

Raising the fares while new projects are set to begin is irresponsible and is another case of passing the buck on to consumers who may be having a hard time financially. Commuters can expect to be spending at least $100 per month for a 30-day pass.

“When it got raised from $1.25 to $1.50 people already struggled enough to pay the bus [fare], and that was a big struggle. And [now] they’re raising it to $1.75. They should find other ways to raise it

Pierce students can avoid paying that cost by purchasing the college 30-day pass the MTA offers for $43. The caveat to this is that to qualify for the pass, one would have to be registered as a full-time student.

Students who qualify can pick up an application at the student services building, complete the form and mail it in with a copy of your class schedule. A discounted monthly pass for full-time students is a great alternative to spending $7 per day for an entire month or buying the regular monthly pass for $100, but this disenfranchises a good amount of the student body who don’t qualify because they are not full-time students.

For those who don’t qualify, the only alternative would be to find other means of transportation to and from school. Carpooling, riding a bike or a skateboard part way and taking one bus for $1.75 the rest of the way would also be great alternatives to save money.

However, there is no alternative in the long term for anyone because the MTA plans to raise the fare again in the future after the agency determines their long-term financial outlook, as reported by the LA Times. As the student body tries to cope and find ways to pay for rising tuition cost, we must also think ahead and find alternative solutions to the rising cost of public transportation.

Pros and Cons: Minimum wage increase for California workers

One hundred fifteen hours.

Nick McNamara

nmcnamararoundupnews@gmail.com

That is the number of hours you would have to work per week in California at minimum wage to be able to afford the average rent without spending more than the recommended 30 percent of your income on it, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

To put that in perspective, you would have to work about 35 hours per week, almost a fulltime job, making minimum wage just to pay the average cost of rent.

Simply put, minimum wage must be raised to a living wage.

The value of minimum wage peaked in 1968 and ever since minimum wage earners have effectively lost purchasing power, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

The minimum wage would be $10.10 if it had followed the rate of inflation.

This would not just help teenagers, as common rhetoric would have you think. Teenage workers only account for 24 percent of minimum wage earners, according to the Pew Research

A $10.10 minimum wage would improve the wages of 4.7 million working moms, one fifth of all working moms, and 7 million working parents total, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

Mayor Eric Garcetti recently proposed raising the state minimum wage to $13.25 per hour by 2017. While this is a step in the right direction, working people in the state and nationwide need to go further.

Inflation is not the only factor to have changed, production rate has as well.

At that peak in 1968, production was 53 percent of what it is today according to the CEPR.

Not only are workers making less per hour compared to 1968, but they are also much more efficient and produce more per hour.

If the production increase was factored in to the minimum wage, workers would be making $21.72 per hour according to the CEPR.

But instead this increase in profit went solely into the bosses’ pockets rather than theworkers who created the means to make that profit. While $21 per hour might be a ways off, working people should join the fight for $15 and demand a decent living wage for all.

Luis Ayala

layala.roundupnews@gmail.com

Raising the minimum wage won’t be good for all of us here in Los Angeles, while Mayor Eric Garcetti is pushing his plan to raise the wage to $13.25 by 2017. While the increase in minimum wage might sound fascinating at first, we have to look more into it and see how it will affect us. The current plan from Mayor Garcetti needs to be improved dramatically, so that it works out for everyone.

The proposed plan is to raise the minimum wage from $9 to $10.25 in 2015, to $11.75 in 2016 and $13.25 in 2017. Yes, everyone likes to get paid more and this plan has the minimum wage going up every year for the next 3 years, but it will not be worth it in the end.

The increase in wage will rise and so will everything else with it. Businesses, small or large will have to change radically. Major companies will be able to afford the change and give their employees a higher wage, while smaller companies won’t be able to do the same and will struggle. Small businesses have very little chance of surviving, because they will have to pay their employees more and to do that they would have to increase their prices on their products to be able to afford workers.

Prices on food, clothing, transportation, etc. must go up in order to pay all the employees. Small businesses will need to start laying people off when they can’t afford to keep them. Instead of making more jobs, this plan will cause us to also lose jobs.

Major companies’ willpower to survive will have them figure out a way to keep paying their workers while creating new jones , but they would have to give less hours to all their part time employees. At $13.25 an hour, working 25 hours or less, it is hard to live with especially if you have a family to feed.

At first it didn’t sound that bad to raise the wage here in Los Angeles. Looking forward this plan to increase it up to $13.25 in 2017, by Mayor Garcetti will affect employees and all businesses.

The plan needs a lot of work before it can go through or we will see drastic changes by small and large businesses. While your pay check might look bigger, so will the prices of everything that we buy.