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Many minimum-wage workers can't even afford a modest one-bedroom apartment, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition's annual report.
The national housing wage for a modest one-bedroom apartment is $17.90, while the federal minimum wage is $7.25.
A low-income worker earning the federal minimum wage would need 2.5 jobs to afford a one-bedroom apartment.
To all America's youth, this is why you absolutely must finish high school, and preferably college (or trade school) also, before popping babies out.
The only time I ever made minimum wage was when I was 15 - my first job.
When I worked for a staffing company (for many years) our clients were local companies and NO ONE paid anywhere close to minimum wage - all companies paid significantly more than minimum wage, for what most people would call "entry level" positions.
Around here, about the only minimum wage jobs are extremely low skill, part time positions usually best suited for (and filled by) teenagers. Who are living at home and spending all their money on clothes and entertainment.
As another poster said people get roommates or they live with family .
Where did it say minimum wage was created so that single people could live alone without roommates right in the city ?
I’d like to see minimum wage be abolished . I know the pro min wage crowd always screaches
“but then employers will only pay $1 an hour !”
Well if someone only values their time at $1 an hour let them work for that .
In reality nobody would accept $1 hr an hour . Wages should be based on the demand for the labor and value of the labor . Not an arbitrary number like $15 hr like the idiot politicians in CA and elsewhere have decided .
I remember a time in the 70s where hoardes of non english speaking women worked in NYC chinatown as seamstresses getting paid piecemeal. Manufacture a pair of pants? you got 25 cents, do 4 in an hour you got $1 an hour. now you might say it was the 70s and the minimum wage was much lower then. I remember my mother working into the mid 80s getting the same kind of pay and seeing her stuff wind up at macys selling for many multiples of what she was paid to make it. She was a legal US resident, but couldn't find another job so there was not much else she could do other than sit at home for nothing. When off-shore manufacturing became all the rage, all the hoardes of sweatshop workers lost their jobs to even cheaper labor in China.
Illegal aliens serve one purpose and that's cheap labor. Manufacturers get to say 'made in the USA'.
Can't wait for full automation where labor and benefits costs go to zero.
When you live in a money mad asylum, do not be surprised at the craziness.
Thanks to money madness, people are trapped into believing that money has intrinsic value independent of the marketplace of goods and services.
So they seek to "make money" by any means, fair or foul.
Then add in the confiscation of surplus by socialist government. (Current aggregate tax rate is 39%) If you're not a recipient, you're probably paying far more than 39% in taxes. (Come on, someone has to make up the difference !)
Due to the scarcity of money tokens, there is a drought - while there is rampant inflation - supposedly too much money chasing too few goods. OKAY, Bill GATES, how are you bidding up the price for everything?
OOPS.
Maybe the eCONomists are CON men.
IN reality, prosperity is not based on money tokens, nor their distribution. Prosperity is dependent upon prodigious production, equitable trade, and enjoyment of surplus usable goods and services. Doing more with less so more can enjoy is superior to doing less with more so few can enjoy.
So when you ask WHY there is unmet need, unemployment, underemployment, closed factories, and bankrupted retailers, the typical answer is "No one has enough money!"
But if money was the cause of all this, let us end poverty forever - credit everyone with 22 billion billion quatloos. Now, everyone is EQUALLY WEALTHY. No one "needs" more money. But if no one "Needs" money, why would anyone bother to work or trade their property for "more'?
Whoa - - - [in DUDE voice]
Even the starving children are fabulously wealthy.
WAKE UP, and realize that civilization depends upon people being prodigious producers of surplus goods and services - and NOT on the money tokens used by the masters to skim vast wealth while doing NOTHING useful in trade.
As long as you chase after "their" money tokens, you're their chump.
If shelter should cost no more than 1/3 your income, why not charge rents in terms of labor?
With a 40 hour work week, rent should not take more than 13.3 hours of labor in equitable trade.
Ah, but I forgot to include the 39% aggregate tax load that burdens the nation's workers. They only have 24.4 hours to spare for their own. Now, 13.3 hours is more than HALF of their working wage, after taxes.
And let us not forget INFLATION (debauching of the money) and USURY that causes even more loss of buying power.
(Remember to thank the eCONomists for blaming too much money chasing too few goods during a money drought....)
OUCH
Pharaoh's serfs paid one part in five (20%). Modern socialist serfs are far worse off !
And when will all that free market magic start? Employees got a 2.6% pay raise and Corporations have saved 1.6 trillion from the tax cuts, most of which went to stock buybacks.
It happens every time. It it weren’t happening, you’d see no pay raises, and everyone would be working for minimum wage. Clearly, that’s not happening.
What's good about it? It doesn't grow the company,
From the perspective of the remaining stock holders, yes it does. They each own more than they did previously.
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increase the number of employees, result in wage increases or more benefits to employees,
Non of those are reasons for stock buybacks, so course none of that will happen as a result of a stock buyback.
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it contributes to wage stagnation
No it doesn’t.
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and consolidates ownership into fewer hands making the principles of the corporation far richer than they would have been if compensation was based on profitability
Making the owners of a company rich is the reason the company exists. Sounds like a good strategy to me.
It happens every time. It it weren’t happening, you’d see no pay raises, and everyone would be working for minimum wage. Clearly, that’s not happening.
There was a study done for Los Angeles that one needs to make $33 hr to rent the average 1 bedroom apartment . Think places can pay $33 hr ?
These fast food places don’t make money on the dollar menu stuff , it brings in people for the other stuff .
Supermarkets do this too where they’ll have low prices on stuff where they lose money to bring in people for the other stuff .
Margins are very tight in the restaurant industry, despite the myths people believe .
Nobody is putting down minimum wage workers we are saying one shouldn’t expect to work minimum wage and then be able to have your own apartment without roommates , cable tv , etc etc .
Regulating what private landlords can charge in rent is a bad idea .
Like I said before it makes more sense to work in the current system instead of trying to change it .
The roadmap is out there but people want to come up with a million excuses about why they can’t do it .
Entitlement mentality .
“I can’t get an education because X “ .. “I can’t make more money because X”
They want to make more money and then they call the wealthy greedy .
This addresses not just this quote, but others as well.
Why shouldn't they be paying the$33/hr it requires to live there? WHERE do they expect workers,to live? If tgey cant afford to live there, then there's not going to be any workers to be had. People forget that. A labor shortage drives UP wages.
Next, fast food places DO make money on the $1 items. Quite a bit in fact. The problem is profit greed for the wealthy CEO of the company. Do you know what a famous fast food chains cost is for a hamburger? All inclusive? $0.23. Are you telling me $0.77 ISN'T a good profit margin? That was a few years,ago, it's possible that it now costs $0.35. Point is it's NOT A loss leader. They dont have much else to sell. A grocery store has 10,000 items to sell. What does the fast food place have to sell? May be 20 items PLUS "specials "? There,is no myth that there is no profit in the restaurant industry. I've also cooked in 3 and 4 star restaurants. The cost of an item to produce, all inclusive, was then sold at three times the cost, to cover wages and the all mighty profit for re owners, must of whom could not step in and cook an order if their livihoid depended on it, and it DOES. If there was no profit in the restaurant industry there'd be no restaurants.
Grocery stores have long bemoaned the "super thin margins", yet they rake in profuts for the owners and/or shareholder ( also owners). Yet their employees cannot afford to buy their stock on the cheap wages.
I worked retail for many years. Operating a cash register is not, and has not been an easy task since they first computerized them. True, with faster scanning tech it became easier, but to undo a wrong price charge requires an act of Congress or of a god of some sort. And yet are now working to eliminate cashiers all tigether. As a receiving supervisor, I got all the paperwork on all the merchandise that came daily on our trucks. It included the retail price, the cost of the goods, and the "landed cost", that is the all inclusive costs of getting it to the shelves to sell and ring out the door from the manufacturer to consumer. A $0.20 landed cost item would he sold for $1.99. How many of you have complained that the hospital charged you $5.00 for 2 $0.03 aspirin? It IS true, not all items have such a mark up. Clothing is automatically at least 100-300% markup. Electronics is a much thinner margin, but the additional profit is made from the $0.20 item that sells for $1.99 And the $5.00 t-shirt that sells for $19.99. heck, even at 50% off the tshirt they still make money.
If no one could make a profit on a $1.00 item, then Why is it Dollar Tree and the like is in business? Not a single item over $1.00, and some items are multiples for a dollar. And there'sgold in the profit s.
Landlords are just as,greedy. Why do some cities in the USA have " tent towns "? Why do some cities have Rent Control? To ensure the populace has a place to live on at least a semi affordable basis. That older Americans don't get shut out in the cold or tent towns to subsist.
People makeup cities, not businesses. What has happened to downtown USA? There IS revitalization projects going on, but take a look at Detroit. When jobs no longer existed that got paid enough to live, people abandoned it to live elsewhere. Literally left the houses vacant, and walked away. Just how much profit are Those land Lord's making when the jobs left and housing became unaffordable for the jobs that did exist? Zero, zilch nada. Empty city downtown. Houses bought for a whole dollar for those who will fix them up and have someone living in them. Downtown USA went vacant years ago. Now they have set about "revitalizing " them.
Except food, clothing ( because of weather or because laws say you must) and shelter and the items we need to prepare or live in them we don't NEED 95% of the crap that people sell. True, we could all live in dung huts, but sometines thise who live in dung huts are happier than those in 3000 sq ft houses.
As far,as lands where the tax rate is 50%, they EXPECT, and GET a whole lot more for it. Paid to go to school, paid housing while doing so, paid for health insurance, paid child care, paid family leave and paid vacations. Long paid vacations. None of that exists here. Every thing has a price, and prices have gone rampant. No longer is it what the market will bear, it is what do we want to get out of the market?
As far as,starting a business, I don't know if everybody CANstart a business. Some won't get loans or have assets to do so, again, only the wealthy can." It takes money to make money" is NIT a new phrase.
On the subject of businesses that rely largely in minimum wagers for employees, i dont know a single one owner who has said"ill pay my workers more and take a (pay cut) (profit cut) myself". It's no they bemoan the fact " I'll have to raise prices and lose customers". Oh really? Yet they manage somehow to stay in business??? Profit margins can't be THAT bad, then.
During a presidential election once, "Joe the plumber" made headlines saying if " this happens and I get taxed more I'll no longer be making $250k "....and what does he pay his employees? $30k a year because HE can't handle all the work himself??. I don't know of too many one-man shows where the owner does all the work without any employees if so they don't stay in business long as,they can't handle single handedly run the show without sone sort of help. But boy, they certainly decide what profit or paycheck THEY want to get out of it.
How is that Costco can pay higher than minimum and prevailing wages, yet sells everything for just 15% over cost? And stay in business?
So don't say " it can't be done " or " there's no profit in a dollar item".
And lastly how do you know that your $100k job might NOT actually be worth $150k? But you, too, are being paid the minimum that they can get away with so as to maximize profits????
And how many at $100k cannot afford a $700k or $800 k house in their own job market area? All because the owners want "maximum profit "?
How many of you, at that precious $100k have ever said " thats highway robbery "!! When buying your $10 happy meal???
From the perspective of the remaining stock holders, yes it does. They each own more than they did previously.
Non of those are reasons for stock buybacks, so course none of that will happen as a result of a stock buyback.
No it doesn’t.
Making the owners of a company rich is the reason the company exists. Sounds like a good strategy to me.
This tax bill was allegedly designed to stimulate the economy and trickle down to workers in terms of higher pay and increased benefits. Stock buybacks do not stimulate the economy in the long term. They do increase the price of stock and in that way they benefit pension funds and 401k's but money not in the economy does not stimulate the economy.
As I already cited there is a net negative wage increase over the past year and in May we incurred a $147 billion budget deficit, an increase of 66 percent from the same month last year as the ledger took a hit from declining revenue and higher spending, the anticipated GDP growth won't come from business expansion or investment but rather consumer and deficit spending.
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