I was never good at math. Honestly, it was terrible. With fear and confusion, I counted with my fingers, hiding them under the desk, and scared and nervous avoided the teacher’s gaze, so that she would not ask me the result of this or that addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and all those equations that my little head in childhood I I found them too complicated because I was not born with math skills.

But hey, my clumsiness with numbers doesn’t stop me from doing a simple and quick mental calculation based on the news that they’re going to increase the dollar—the lonely and sad little dollar that was announced with so much fanfare—to a minimum. salary.

That is, from $8.50 to $9.50. I think I even hear comedian Johnny Ray’s voice in that Iris Chacon impersonation: “tremmmendo.”

Let’s see, $9.50 an hour multiplied by 8 hours of work equals $76, multiplied by 5 days is $380, which, multiplied by four weeks (ignoring the five-yielding months in this example) gives a “total” amount of $1,520. So yes, caput, finally and stop counting.

Subtract from that amount what they charge you for Social Security, Medicare, income tax, health insurance, etc. under the deductions line. With what is left to slip through your fingers, you pay for your own or rented house, water, electricity, car or transport, gas, internet, telephone and food, which are the basic expenses of living, or rather, survival.

So wherever you go and whatever you buy, you pay IVU, IBA, CAME and GONE, plus weird fees that appear on your bills like magic. They charge you, even if it’s a centaury, for one or more. And they are draining us penny by penny.

I have no other way to say it: it’s crazy.

Pray to heaven that your car doesn’t break down, the battery doesn’t die, or some trichitoline ends up in the fridge…that you don’t get sick, that you don’t have to go to the hospital and spend money on medicine, deductibles, and parking…that your kids don’t have school projects that require materials that their shoes don’t last. And forget about Yuyo the Pig Slayer, as they say, give yourself a well-deserved treat, some air, a sip of entertainment. To do this, you need to delay or ignore the payment.

That’s the thing. They do not give a minimum wage. Spot. Inflation is suffocating. And it is quite easy to understand. A can of beans, typical of our family basket, used to cost sixty cents, but now it’s almost $2. You live in an impulse. And not to mention those who work part-time. I don’t write about it because old age has made me sensitive and I can start crying and not stop. And you are with me. Then the evil spirit enters me and I have bad thoughts against the wagons, which receive all the help that should be for people or couples who work, they fight and at the end of the month they do not get a salary. Those should be rewarded for their efforts, desire and leaving their skins.

Ah, but let’s not worry ladies and gentlemen, they’ve announced another raise. Yes, in a year they will raise the minimum wage by another dollar. I don’t tell him…