Charlie the retail salesman (as opposed to Joe the plumber), a working-class American like so many out there, makes $7.25 an hour – minimum wage – and works 40 hours per week. He’s a single dad (mom ran off with Mike the milkman years ago), 25, and father to a five-year-old son, Charlie Jr. Believe it or not, the elder Charlie has a college education (not paid for, of course) and would love nothing more than to teach elementary school.

Unfortunately for him, inequities in state aid and the loss of federal dollars have resulted in major cutbacks by the local school district; the powers that be are firing teachers, not hiring.

So Charlie goes to work each and every day, even when he’s ill, he pays his taxes, doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink, doesn’t golf and simply wants to raise his son in the kind of America he grew up in.

Charlie’s situation is a perfect example of why we need to raise the minimum wage, as proposed recently by Representative Jesse L. Jackson Jr., an Illinois Democrat.

Why? It’s simple, really.

At $7.25 an hour, Charlie brings home approximately $300 per week ... before taxes. That’s $1,200 per month. For the sake of argument, let’s ignore the taxes (and his health insurance costs) and go with those numbers. Charlie’s rent is $400 a month, which is fairly cheap nowadays, but hey, he and Charlie Jr. don’t need a lot of room. Charlie drives ten miles round trip to work, five days a week, for a total of 50 miles. However, his son is on the T-ball team, which adds another 50 miles every week, for games and practices. On weekends, Charlie and his son visit his mom and dad, who live about 20 miles away, a total of 40 miles travelled per week.

All in all, Charlie drives roughly 140 miles per week. His two-door Ford gets approximately 25 miles to the gallon, so he needs around six gallons of gas every week, 24 gallons a month. With gas prices hovering around $4 where Charlie lives, that’s approximately $100 a month.

As we now stand, Charlie spends $500 of his $1,200 in monthly earnigs (no taxes yet) on gas and rent, which leaves Charlie $700.

Now, because it’s just the two of them, food costs are relatively low, except the prices in the grocery store keep climbing up and up. The two Charlies, however, manage (somehow) to get by on $100 per week in groceries, $400 per month.

That leaves Charlie with $300 ... still no taxes or insurance costs figured in.