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The taxpayer should not be expected to make up the wages. The person who works in a job like that is expected to get another job to make up the difference. Unfortunately, too many don't and they are the ones who expect us to make up the difference.
What I don't get here is why people are fighting for lousy pay and intolerable working hours for American workers. Do you want this country to become a nation of a few wealthy aristocrats while the rest of us slave endless hours just to feed ourselves?
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And this is despite the fact that today's low-wage workers are older and better educated than in the past.
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The current minimum wage looks even worse when compared with two major family expenses. To pay tuition at a public four-year college, a minimum-wage worker had to work 254 hours in a year in 1979, while in 2010 it took 923 hours, or almost six months of full-time work. Similarly, in 1979, a minimum-wage worker had to work 329 hours to pay for a family health insurance policy, but 2,079 hours in 2011, or basically a year of full-time work.
One problem with your made up ecomonics. The cost of food has gone up and minimum wage has not!
But the CPI says otherwise.
FWIW I agree with you but the government doesn't track that because commodities are too unstable in price. Yet Americans cannot exclude energy, food, housing; we are stuck paying the higher prices while the government can just replace a higher priced item on their list with a lower priced item and say "inflation is low".
The cost of food has gone up, the cost of gas has gone up, rents are up and all are up way more than the CPI.
Reality is a different world then government statistics my friend but some things are pegged to the government statistics.
How much are you willing to pay for a big mac and fries? These jobs pay what they do because there are limits on what the consumer will pay. A job at McDonalds was never intended to be a job to support you. These are jobs teens take and people take as second jobs. They require no experience and little in the way of actual skills so it's not surprising they pay minimum wage.
Since the profits of these companies are going up but the wages are not, where do you suppose the money is going now?
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Meanwhile, the companies that hire minimum-wage workers are doing just fine. The National Employment Law Project has found that two-thirds of low-wage workers are employed by large corporations, not small businesses. In 2011, corporate profits hit an all-time record of $1.97 trillion.
Ah... because the same "people" who can spend billions of dollars to keep their corporate and personal income tax rates low and any increase in the minimum wage lower, can politically shift their labor costs on to the public all the while screaming that they are unfairly taxed because of the lazy shiftless people who don't want to work.
It depends where the profits are made. If the profits aren't coming from the US then the reinvestment of those profits won't be made in the US either.
Many of these companies are reinvesting in overseas operations and opening stores and building local manufacturing there.
In the case of McDonald's, European countries are it's big profit maker.
But that's EXACTLY what is happening.....the company pays such low wages that the employees can't afford to support themselves and their families, even if they work 2 or 3 jobs!!! Dear god! What kind of life is that? In this country, people need 2 or 3 low wage jobs just to try to make ends meet! INSTEAD what is happening is that the companies are making TONS OF MONEY, pay little to no taxes, and as someone else said shifting their labor costs onto the public, and we have to make up for the low wages with things like a big food assistance program! Whether you like it or not, you, as the taxpayer, are making up the gap in the wages. Think about that the next time you vote for someone working for the benefit of the 1%. And, no, you are most likely to NEVER EVER be part of the 1%.
Your post explains exactly why I am all for increasing taxes on the top 1%! Increasing their taxes is not wealth redistribution, it is the prevention of wealth redistribution from the bottom 98% to the top!
Your post explains exactly why I am all for increasing taxes on the top 1%! Increasing their taxes is not wealth redistribution, it is the prevention of wealth redistribution from the bottom 98% to the top!
But isn't that's how the free market supposed to work?
Part of the supply and demand equation is "supply"
The wealthy have the wealth, what are the poor people going to legally do to "demand" the wealth from them?
How much should a minimum skill job pay? 40k? 60 K then what do you pay higher skilled workers? Oh wait then the price of everything also goes up and now that 40 k is like 20 k used to be.
Here is an idea. Don't have kids until you can afford them. Only have as many as you can afford.
How about you make to many kids you get a second job?
I agree the tax payer shouldnt be bank rolling anyones bad decisions, corporate or individual.
What if they cannot afford birth control either?
By your standards and the decreasing American wages relative to buying power, our population will die out.
But isn't that's how the free market supposed to work?
Part of the supply and demand equation is "supply"
The wealthy have the wealth, what are the poor people going to legally do to "demand" the wealth from them?
Well considering the war against unions that has been going on for the last 30 years, there isn't much they can do, for the immediate future. But as American labor history has shown, this is only a temporary state of things.
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