“Lancaster will never return to the white middle-class city that it once was…”
What we need in Lancaster is a growing middle class . . of every color!
If we believe that that the pie is one size and we are all fighting for a piece of it (or a larger and better piece of it), we get the broken, Humpty Dumpty cities that we have today. It does not have to be that way. A single starting point would be giving everyone a job . . . . a real job, with a living wage, and, a living wage for any job that needs to be done!
Let’s try that for the next 100 years, then take a look at our cities; Is the tax base improved, are the schools better, are more students better educated, is housing improved, are streets cleaner, more cultural opportunities available, better health care, less crime, less fear of each other?
People with money like to say that money is not everything, but in a money economy, money is the only way to feed families, to shelter families, to maintain schools, build and sustain community infrastructures, to provide recreation and cultural opportunities, even to build and maintain churches . . . it takes money.
We certainly do not need an excess but we do need sufficiency, meaning family financial sustainability for all families, no matter if we are working at Burger King or Armstrong. (Is feeding people less important that making ceilings or floors?)
A “living wage”; some believe is an impossible ideal, but it is not. If we want to, we can do it. If we want to.
