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Reduce illegal immigration as much as possible. Tightly restrict legal immigration to skilled workers and reduce asylum for refugees. Foreign born citizens now make up the highest percentage of the US population in 100 years and it's rising. This has greatly increased the wealth and income gap in the US as many of the immigrants are poor and unskilled.
Yes. It's not important that there is a gap between the very rich and the rest of us. Oprah Winfrey is worth over $3 BILLION ! but so what? It doesn't affect how I live, the car I drive, or the food I eat that she's so extremely wealthy.
What matters is that there are jobs for Americans and that employers aren't given uinlimited cheap labor so they can pass over Americans when hiring and pay less than dirt. Get some kind of control over immigration and wages will start going up on their own as employers realize they need to compete for labor.
Who needs a job, just let all of us own a printing press to create money like the Fed who supports the nonproductive rich. They print enough to make every worker in the US an instant millionaire.
Pay people a living wage, no matter what they do.
There is no reason a food worker should live in poverty.
No one who works in this country should ever live in poverty.
Yea, it's just that simple.
Everyone can have a living wage that earns it. Pay people what they are worth is what we should be doing. Food workers don't have to keep working in that industry.
No one who works in the Country should choose to live in poverty. Rich or poor is a choice that we make ourselves. we are responsible for where we are on the money spectrum. You may have been born poor but you don't have to remain poor. Their are so many opportunities for people to make it here in this nation of ours. The rest of the world wants what we have, which is the opportunities that are available here in the USA.
Some suggestions:
1-No big houses.
2-No big cars.
3-No foreign adventures.
4-Curtail wastage.
5-Domestic peace.
I employ quite a few lower-class individuals and even give my personal assistants a $20 Christmas bonus if they have worked hard enough for me over the past year. So yes, I am doing my part to reduce the gap.
Do I really need to spell this out for you? Okay, here goes:
If you're making $12/hour and work 40 hours a week, that's $480/week before taxes. Let's assume that 25% of your paycheck is taken out because of taxes or other deductions. That will give you about $360 a week, $720 every two weeks, and about $1500 a month (rounding up).
You have to pay rent. If you're lucky, this is maybe $500/month. But it could be higher in some cities.
So if you have an apartment, you have utility bills to pay as well. Electricity, water and gas--unless you want to use candles every night and bathe in rainwater. A very conservative estimate for this would be $100/month.
If you can't rely on public transportation, you need a car. Cars need insurance and gas. And even if you buy a small car (Toyota Yaris/Chevy Aveo/Hyundai Accent/etc.), you will probably have to make monthly payments on it. So let's assume you sink $300/month into you car. Of course, you could get a used car too, but used cars are often of questionable reliability and may require expensive maintenance.
You gotta eat, right? I'm not talking about steak and sushi, but rather basic staple foods like rice, vegetables, and beans. This will probably cost about $100 a month per person. Or do you expect people to eat tomato soup and ramen noodles four nights a week, thus increasingly the likelihood that they will need medical care in the future for their unbalanced diets?
So now we've spent $1000. Where does the remaining $500 go?
If you have a child, you probably have to pay for monthly daycare. And if your child is a baby, throw in baby formula, diapers and medical checkups. Or are we not supposed to take our infant children to the doctor to receive necessary vaccinations? And if the child is older, you have to buy school supplies and more expensive clothing (not designer clothes, but a basic pair of blue jeans and a coat, for example). Daycare and babysitting expenses vary wildly. I'd estimate a very conservative price of $300/month.
If you went to college, you likely have student loans. I'll estimate that at $200.
Cable TV service might be a luxury, but phone service is not. Whether you have a landline or a cell phone, let's estimate $40/month here.
Internet service used to be a luxury, but it's becoming more of a necessity--especially since public libraries are often targets for reducing funding. Let's estimate another $40/month here.
I'm forgetting something. Oh wait! What happens if you get sick? If you have health insurance, you are probably having the premiums deducted from your paycheck. So let's estimate that at $75 for a really cheap plan. But if you get sick and go to the ER or primary care doctor, you have to deal with copays, deductibles and the cost of prescription drugs. There's no way to put a price tag on this, but if you have to go to the doctor, it can get pricey fast.
...and of course, if you don't have health insurance at all, going to the ER is always "free!" So that makes everything more expensive for everyone else.
We also have incidental/nonfood expenses, such as computer paper, printer ink cartridges, parking meters/tickets, oil changes/tire rotations, laundry detergent, etc.
By this point, we've likely run out of money.
At the same time, we're supposed to put away money for retirement or put money aside so we can have a 6-month emergency fund. Or we're supposed to go back to school and take night classes even though we don't have the money to afford the tuition or added student loan payments. Then we get in an at-fault car accident or have an emergency medical problem or are saddled with an $800 car repair bill.
I don't think I listed anything exorbitant in these figures. No vacations. No designer clothes. No dining out. No fancy tech gadgets. But for many people, they are just one disaster away from financial ruin. They are like hamsters in a wheel barely keeping their heads above water. They are too busy trying to survive to care about the guy making $150,000 or more.
It's a hard life to break out of. Yeah, some people do manage to get out of these circumstances through their own "hard work." But a lot of people "work hard" every day and are trapped in poverty or near-poverty. The system is not stacked in favor of people who are the most at risk.
the thing is working hard isn't enough- you have to work hard at something you're productive and efficient at that has value.you just gave a hypothetical example where someone has kids and student loans- not everyone has student loans and not everyone has kids. those are choices people make.
the vast majority of people who have huge student loan amounts got them by making a horrible decision.they went to schools that are way more expensive than what they needed and many of the majored in useless nonsense and/or learned nothing that adds to their skillset and bought into the nonsense that just because you have a degree that makes you intelligent or productive.
no politician will ever say it but while there are many smart productive people who go to college there are also many idiots out there who graduated. there are also many well paying jobs that do not require a college degree.
i can understand someone who owes money on student loans and has a kid having a tough time financially working 40 hours a week at 12 dollars an hour. but kids are expensive and so are student loans.it's not a coincidence that wealthier, more intelligent and more educated people on average have less kids than poorer,unintelligent, uneducated people.
if you're working 40 hours a week and still can't cut it financially that means you need to work more hours. jobs may be hard to find, but you can always clean houses, buy things and sell them at a markup be it online or in person etc.
we all make dumb/bad decisions in life and some are more costly than others.sometimes people also just have total horse**** luck and those are the ones I really feel bad for.but i know if i was in a position where i had a kid,student loans etc and was pulling home 1500 dollars a month after taxes I would either need to work more hours or do something more productive. i would not expect my employer to give me a raise just because due to my circumstances it's hard to get by on that 1500 a month.
i know someone right now who has a kid and is going to school. but he is going to a very cheap school that he gets some financial aid for and pays for the rest of his tuition in cash.instead of taking ****ty 8-12 dollar an hour jobs he basically hustles in his free time.he umpires baseball games in league around the area and referees football and basketball games.he will also sell water, drinks candy etc at sporting events or in parks and makes some money on ebay/craigslist.
if your lifes financial circumstances suck there are almost always ways of improving it and they don't just require getting a job somewhere else or borrowing 30k a year for school. there are many ways to make money on your own that pay better than ****ty jobs and in most cases you make your own hours. of course unfortuantely some people have debilitiating diseases where they really can't to anything to help themselves and i truly feel bad for them.
What has to change is morality chiefly "honesty".
Cheaters and liars put the current liar in office , and now they are up set that he is represent them.
So what has to change ?
You tell me .
any high ranking politician is bought and paid for and is a lying thief. i don't like obama at all but it's not like he's unique.
Ahhh, maybe because wealth isn't infinite? There IS a limit to the amount of wealth that exists in the world, as well as the potential to grow it. A very small segment of society is hording the wealth of the world and, even worse, creating laws to deny the much larger population access to it.
That is wrong. The situation is not as simplistic as you would like to believe. You strike me as one of those Ronald Reagan "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" people. What Reagan failed to acknowledge was that his bootstraps were a lot longer and stronger than average. He was a tall, good-looking, white, American man with an unusually attractive voice, a college education, AND a movie career that was shockingly easy for him to obtain (look it up). Those aren't characteristics assigned to the majority of people in the world.
sure but you don't have to be reagan rich to live a good life.
Good choices are important do doubt but many poor have made good decisions they just have not had the opportunity or are not smart enough to go beyond a basic wage job. Not everyone can work at higher wage jobs there are just not of those jobs for everyone.
agreed but if you're not smart enough then in a job that requires intelligence nobody is ever going to pay you a good wage nor should anyone.and if someone isn't smart enough to go beyond a basic job chances are they also suck at decision making.
there are many things I am terrible at, I wouldnt expect someone to pay me a good wage to do those things horribly.
so many peope who make crappy wages think they should make more because they have kids, loans,cars,and other bills.none of that means anything- you should make more when you produce more at something that isn't easily replaceable.
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