sa国际传媒官网网页入口

I'm probably the poorest Republican you know.

At 60 years old after 30-something years in the newspaper business, all I own of any value is a 2018 Buick Encore I intend to drive until the wheels fall off, and my coveted baseball cards from my full-head-of-hair days I can't bring myself appraise, much less sell.

My net worth is barely better than Deb Haaland's.

Moving from Hobbs to sa国际传媒官网网页入口 in 2020 literally bankrupted me. I struggled to make rent, my monthly car payment and my credit card bills. I utilized the friendly food banks and my co-workers took pity on me after seeing me eating cans of soup for lunch. I had to make tough choices between buying name-brand and off-brand cigarettes, or pop.

I'm so cheap I don't turn the air conditioner on in my 467-square-foot studio apartment until the interior temperature hits 85. I use digital rabbit ears to pick up free broadcast TV and I'm not shy about appropriating furniture from the dumpster area. People leave behind all kinds of decent stuff when they move out.

But when I got hit by $5,000 of car vandalism at my apartment complex in my inaugural year in the Duke City and $5,000 of medical bills from Hobbs that had reached the collections and wage garnishment point in Bernalillo County Metropolitan Court, I threw my hands in the air and thought about becoming a Democrat.

I got an attorney instead and filed for bankruptcy. I was awake at 3 a.m. Easter morning in 2023 and managed to convince the tow truck driver who had come to repossess my Buick that I had filed for bankruptcy. He said I was his first repo target that actually had the bankruptcy papers to stop a car repossession.

I now have zero debt, and my 2018 Buick, baseball cards and tiny apartment. Life is good, and I've got a regular column to tell you all about it.

If you wonder why I'm so damn Republican, it's pretty simple: I don't trust politicians, I want as little government involvement as possible in my daily life, and I firmly believe the less government has to do in the private and business affairs of others the better.

That includes setting wages between private employers and private employees. I'm no more a fan of a government-imposed minimum wage than a maximum wage. I firmly believe free markets are what made America the world's innovator, economic superpower and greatest nation ever on Earth. USA, USA.

I don't see private businesses as predators. I see them as the building blocks of a prosperous and thriving society, all throughout world history.

But from my personal experiences above you may sense I have some empathy for the working poor, which I absolutely do. I've been working-class poor all my life. But like my mom used to say, "Just because you're poor doesn't mean you have to have a messy house."

You just stop complaining about it and try to do something about it if you're a Republican. You wear it as a badge of helpless victimization if you're a Democrat. Have you ever known a hard worker who was a communist? Me neither.

Putting ideology aside, making it in the state's largest city can be tough, if not impossible, if you're at the lower levels of the income ladder. The state minimum wage of $12 an hour comes out to $24,960 a year for someone working 40 hours per week with no overtime.

There's no way you can make it in this city on that. Rent alone is going to run half that. You'd have to have a roommate who also works and you don't mind sleeping with to afford a 1-bedroom apartment on $12 an hour.

And you'll struggle mightily if you need a new car or major repairs. Homeownership isn't even a remote possibility at $12 an hour. A wage of $15 an hour works out to only $31,200 annually for someone working full-time, but that's a lot better than $24,960.

We Republicans need to address and fix this. Capital gains cuts and equipment depreciation credits do little for the working stiff. Cutting income taxes on tips and overtime was the best idea Republicans, not Kamala Harris, had in my lifetime. It is the best concrete example I can give pinko commies of Republican policies directly helping the little guy, not the trope of putting corporate interests above workers.

President Donald Trump's "No tax on tips" initiative is so popular Democrats will never be able to undo it. And why would they want to? Does the federal government need every dollar it can squeeze out of the working poor? Of course not.

Which brings me back to the issue of the day, sa国际传媒官网网页入口's minimum wage, currently set at $11.85 but superseded by the state's $12 minimum wage.

I believe the four Republicans on the City Council who voted against increasing the city's minimum wage to $15 at their June 1 meeting made both a tactical and strategic mistake.

At the tactical level, the minimum wage increase was going to pass anyway. Council President Klarissa Pe帽a held the swing vote and shepherded through several business-friendly amendments, including phasing in the $3 increase over three years beginning in January. Annual adjustments are tied to inflation beginning in 2030.

So it passed 5-4 with the four Republican council members in opposition. Councilors Brook Bassan, Dan Champine, Ren茅e Grout and Dan Lewis should have bent and made the vote to raise the city's minimum wage unanimous. Instead they were ideologically rigid and got outmaneuvered, notwithstanding the business-friendly concessions they got.

At the strategic level, Republicans are on the record standing against the working poor. I'm not cool with that. It doesn't bode well for Republicans politically. Strict ideological adherence doesn't accomplish anything if you can't win elections in a blue or purple city.

So it was a strategic misstep for Republicans, as well as a tactical loss.

Yeah, we're all probably going to have to pay 25 cents more for a Big Mac in the city. Raising the minimum wage definitely has an inflationary affect. Any fair-minded person acknowledges that. And it will be widespread across business sectors, not just fast-food.

I don't worry much about businesses closing or layoffs. They will just pass the extra labor costs along to their customers, who sometimes will be minimum-wage earners themselves.

The wait in the drive-thru may be a couple minutes longer as hiring slows. And maybe my closest McDonald's will not be open 24/7 anymore to reduce staffing costs.

I can live with all that.

But at least I won't feel bad taking my bag from someone in the drive-thru who I know is working for peanuts. I'll pay the extra quarter for my Big Mac guilt-free, and I won't hesitate asking for some salt and ketchup packets.

I am a lifelong Republican and I stand with the working poor. They're my kind of people, not the Harvard types who never had a minimum-wage job, worn the uniform or did their own laundry. Maybe one of us will make it big some day. That's what the American Dream is all about.

A fair minimum wage is a good start.

Jeff Tucker is a Journal columnist, former Opinion editor and a member of the Journal鈥檚 Editorial Board. He can be reached a jtucker@abqjournal.com.