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the company i worked for has a location in ohio . it is crazy when you see the difference in pay for the same job positions . but the cost of living is a fraction of long island .
And sometimes the pay skews the opposite way. I worked for the same large corporation doing the same job on the west coast and then in a southern state. My hourly rate was significantly higher in the south. And I was in the union out west but non-union in the south. Go figure.
that is what is nice about living in a high cost area with higher wages . social security is based on your work history . you can rack up a nice jucy ss check in a high cost of living area and move to a low cost one and that check stays intact .
No need to pay more, the workers can simply collect public assistance as a supplement.
I know a few people that are life long low earners, think stockers at Walmart, gas station cashier, etc, and they get food stamps, section 8, medicaid, etc. Heck, a few of them turn down promotions or work less hours so they won't lose their subsidies.
That's because the subsidies are poorly planned - they should be gradually phased out as income rises rather than completely cut off because that would encourage people to work more hours and at better jobs. You'd just say they were stupid if they took more hours and ended up worse off! People do what they are incented to do.
When you finance cars you can't afford, and rack up credit you can't pay back, that's the result.
Sounds like a personal finance problem to me.
It is not just a personal finance problem but also a culture problem. With our consumerism-oriented culture keeps advertising instant gratification and glorifying overspending it is unsurprising people would feel pressured to spend beyond their means.
The lower 40% are mostly the ones having kids outside of marriage. We'll never have a strong middle class until we make a serious dent in the out of wedlock birth rate. Marriage stability must come back into vogue again--at least for those who have kids. It pretty much already has for those in the top half of the income distributions as divorce has been on the decline among those with higher incomes and more education. But it seems that info. hasn't filtered down to those who earn less. And quite frankly, I think the Robert Reichs of the world want to keep it that way.
Most of the lower 40% rose to become the middle class after WWII.
But what you seem to be saying is that those with more money and education don't divorce as often - are you meaning to say that poorer people are also more inclined to have children out of wedlock?
If this is true, what is the answer? More education? I haven't done the math on this one, but say you spend $100,000+ on getting an education and you work 40 years in your lifetime - that's just an estimate. How much more money per year do you have to make in order to justify spending that $100,000+ on college?
And maybe, Robert Reich is just calling it as he sees it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by KaraG
Sounds like you have fallen prey to the misinformation about decent jobs only being found on the west coast.
Let's take Ohio. We just sold a nice 3 bedroom, 2 bath ranch in a great school district for $119,000. There are many other nice homes for sale for as low as $85,000 in the same area. You wouldn't need much more than $35,000 income to qualify for a decent home here.
Salaries for Ohio teachers average around $50,000. In my old district, they got up to $84,000.
If someone makes $15 an hour, that's $28,800 a year. That's not enough for them to buy a home in Ohio. And my next question would be, do the McDonalds and Walmarts in Ohio actually pay $15 an hour?
I know the next comments will be that if someone wants to just work at a McDonalds or Walmart for the rest of their life, they deserve the pay they get. But I see two things wrong with this assumption.
1) We didn't used to think like this. As long as someone was working and working an honest job, we didn't talk about how they "deserve" the pay they get. People used to just be glad you had a job and didn't judge you on it. And in fact, many service jobs were worked by one person supporting a family. I hate to say it, but I think we've become elitist snobs when we start talking about how some jobs are better than others and therefore some people are better than others, just because they don't have to work "those jobs". Which leads into...
2) We judge people solely on how much money they make. We don't just judge them on how successful they are, but we also think people who make more money are smarter, nicer, more moral, and more deserving of the good things in life than people who work lower paid jobs. We've gone from thinking poor people shouldn't smoke or drink because of how much it costs to poor people shouldn't smoke or drink because a poor person who smokes and drinks has lower morals than someone who smokes and drinks but makes more money.
When did that attitude start to take over in our country?
Going back to Mysticaltyger, when we talk about out of wedlock births, we can use statistics to show they're not as common among better educated, better employed, and better paid couples. But that doesn't mean out of wedlock births are completely non-existent among the upper class and nobody says anything about the fathers of those kids. So are we judging those who make less money to be less moral when it comes to out of wedlock births and are we letting something like that color our perception of the kind of people who earn less money?
When well off people in this country think the poor deserve to stay poor and God forbid they think they're as good as "we" are, it's called a class system. And when some people are determined that others stay in the class into which they were born, now we've got a big problem that education doesn't necessarily solve.
I have many answers to the question but people here won't like them so I will keep them to myself. I will say that people don't like to hear the truth they want someone else to blame which is actually furthest from the truth.
I know the next comments will be that if someone wants to just work at a McDonalds or Walmart for the rest of their life, they deserve the pay they get. But I see two things wrong with this assumption.
1) We didn't used to think like this. As long as someone was working and working an honest job, we didn't talk about how they "deserve" the pay they get. People used to just be glad you had a job and didn't judge you on it. And in fact, many service jobs were worked by one person supporting a family. I hate to say it, but I think we've become elitist snobs when we start talking about how some jobs are better than others and therefore some people are better than others, just because they don't have to work "those jobs". Which leads into...
2) We judge people solely on how much money they make. We don't just judge them on how successful they are, but we also think people who make more money are smarter, nicer, more moral, and more deserving of the good things in life than people who work lower paid jobs. We've gone from thinking poor people shouldn't smoke or drink because of how much it costs to poor people shouldn't smoke or drink because a poor person who smokes and drinks has lower morals than someone who smokes and drinks but makes more money.
When did that attitude start to take over in our country?
Going back to Mysticaltyger, when we talk about out of wedlock births, we can use statistics to show they're not as common among better educated, better employed, and better paid couples. But that doesn't mean out of wedlock births are completely non-existent among the upper class and nobody says anything about the fathers of those kids. So are we judging those who make less money to be less moral when it comes to out of wedlock births and are we letting something like that color our perception of the kind of people who earn less money?
When well off people in this country think the poor deserve to stay poor and God forbid they think they're as good as "we" are, it's called a class system. And when some people are determined that others stay in the class into which they were born, now we've got a big problem that education doesn't necessarily solve.
Fast food and part-time retail jobs used to be held primarily by teenagers. I don't think there was any time in our history as a country where a McDonald's employee was able to buy a house and raise a family.
Classism has existed for a long time. The "good old days" weren't nearly as good as you're trying to say. I do think, however, that many people in the past had a far better work ethic than they do now.
I have no problem with the poor wanting improve their status, but I do have a problem with the attitude that everything should be handed to them because "they're as good as anyone else." It should go without saying that every human being has intrinsic value, but when someone chooses McDonald's as a lifelong career, they're choosing to be low-income. I don't know what your comment about it being a problem that education won't solve even means. Most people who get an education don't end up sticking around McD's or Walmart.
Last edited by Metlakatla; 08-10-2018 at 01:42 PM..
To much info and good info to read but in the end, isnt pay suppose to be kept up with rate of inflation or am i asking too much? How can you keep raising prices on goods when your not raising the pay rates?
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