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blah blah blah. "I'm on an Internet board and I can be an ass to anyone and everyone that I want to."
You can see nothing other than your keyboard. If you think you know a person through an anonymous Internet forum then I cant imagine what your personal and professional life outside of city-data must be like. Get real.
Sometimes the single mom needs the minimum wage job because she can't do anything else. Nobody can live on a minimum wage job. Some people have to.
Oh, it is a difficult life. No two ways about it.
The solution is for the individual to obtain marketable job skills which command higher wages. That is a real solution, which works not just in theory but in practice.
The solution is for the individual to obtain marketable job skills which command higher wages.That is a real solution, which works not just in theory but in practice.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nononsenseguy No one is going to hire a person for $15/hr to do a job that requires few skills and is only worth (to the employer) $5.50/hr (for example). That work will be redistributed to other departments/employees, increasing their work load. I have seen it happen.
The government cannot make such decree's and just expect business to roll over. Isn't going to happen.
Pay scales are set by the Market. That is as it should be.
Anyone who can't 'make it' on what they are now earning simply needs to learn new skills. It isn't as easy as it once was — largely because of government interference in the free market. Don't like it? Vote Republican!
Yeah, because when you get "da rite skillz" a job suddenly appears. Like a Leprechaun's pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
CK78, none of us are born with marketable skills. Yet, some people manage to obtain them somehow. There is nothing "magic" about doing what you need to do to get where you want to go. It does require effort, but no "magic".
On the other hand, doing nothing to improve your market value yet expecting high wages to simply materialize somehow will require some "magic".
Getting the right skills is always an ongoing challenge. My father for instance knows C and C++ like the back of his hand yet can't get a job, while I know a myriad of languages including some obscure ones like Scala and F# and I can get a job easily. There's some careers I'm sure where once you're in, you're in, but even for those in the high paying positions, it's a constant push to know what's current so as to not fall behind.
Really, my degree is from a state school wracking up a 15k debt over 4 years, and learned most of what I know and use online. You also can't expect to go into liberal arts and get a job, not many people find knowledge of history or philosophy productive to the workforce...
CK78, none of us are born with marketable skills. Yet, some people manage to obtain them somehow. There is nothing "magic" about doing what you need to do to get where you want to go. It does require effort, but no "magic".
On the other hand, doing nothing to improve your market value yet expecting high wages to simply materialize somehow will require some "magic".
Even if every MW worker were to better themselves through various ways available, there are x jobs for y people where x is far less than y. Yes, some of those folks could elevate themselves from their current situations, but in the end, you're still going to have poverty in MW jobs.
It's an overreaction to The Rent Is Too Damn High.
What's your solution?
It is pretty obvious, to avoid meaningless inflationary up shift of wages, the wages of upper corporate brass must be tied to the wages of the lowest paid workers by simple equation Top=A×Bottom, where A is "competitive" as compared to the rest of the first world. After all the rightwingers are all about competition keeping wages low, except upper class wages, naturally. How USA to compete with the rest of the world if AmericanTop=400×AmericanBottom, and WorldTop=15×WorldBottom? American wage ratio is clearly not competitive.
Paying American upper earnerns 20+ as much as their counterparts elsewhere earn does not result in 20 fold productivity/GDP increase, so why pay more? What is rationale behind A=400 and growing in USA?
Federal minimum wage at this time is $7.25 per hour. If a person works 40 hours per week all year long, that works out to an average of $1,256.67 gross per month.
Fica taxes on $1,256.67 per month are $96.14 per month. Depending on the state, there may be additional payroll tax.
If the employee is single and their own dependent, the federal income tax liability will be $478.
So that means an average of $1120.70 take home per month.
Any benefits are up to the employer. Any welfare benefits are going to vary by state.
Should I presume most employers would include free health insurance as standard? And what kind of welfare would an average state like Cali provide?
The pay isn't too bad for minimum wage actually, but only as long as it includes extra welfare such as insurance. The key to solving the problem isn't to tinker with minimum wage.
As someone who lives in an expensive major city, I would rather the government focused on lowering average house prices and cost of livings in expensive cities rather than increasing minimum wages.
Of course this is just for one person living alone. If there are other people to support then of course it isn't enough.
CK78, none of us are born with marketable skills. Yet, some people manage to obtain them somehow. There is nothing "magic" about doing what you need to do to get where you want to go. It does require effort, but no "magic".
On the other hand, doing nothing to improve your market value yet expecting high wages to simply materialize somehow will require some "magic".
Personal solutions cannot be magnified into a societal fix. It is simple truth narcissistic people somewhat closer to the trough prefer to ignore. Your superior marketable skills are not things in themselves, they must fit in the larger puzzle without dislodging some other cog down the ladder. And it takes rather unique conditions for that outcome. Normally, it is a game of musical chairs, yet every loser of that game must blame himself, it is the cheapest form of the social control you practice here.
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