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Minimum wage was never intended to be a "living wage". It's for entry-level jobs, the kind you take to get experience and, hopefully, references: A former boss who will tell your next boss that you were always on time, always responded to requests quickly and cheerfully, worked hard and did well. And then you move on to the next job, which will pay better, since you now have that experience and refererences. Or if it doesn't, then the one after that. etc.
Anybody who thinks he can, or should, raise a family of four on one minimum-wage job, needs his head examined.
Sometimes responsible people, who waited until they could make enough money to raise a family decently, lose their jobs. And they take a lower-paying job, sometimes minimimum-wage, to tide them over until they can return to the level they had been making before. That makes for a difficult situation. They may have to go into debt, get charity from relatives and friends etc. to help out... but it's only temporary. The can and will get a better job in time, and clear up such matters. That's called "life".
If you can never get a job that pays more than minimum wage, and have no hope of advancement (unlike the guy described above)... what makes you think you can afford a family? They aren't free, you know. More mouths to feed, bigger house or apartment, more clothes etc.
Any politician who thinks you should be able to raise a family of four on one minimum-wage job, needs HIS head examined alongside yours.
Ditto for the people who vote for such politicians.
What if she's a stay-at-home wife who lost her husband?
A serious problem. Is she capable of learning a trade that involves some skill?
Minimum wage was never intended to be a "living wage". It's for entry-level jobs, the kind you take to get experience and, hopefully, references: A former boss who will tell your next boss that you were always on time, always responded to requests quickly and cheerfully, worked hard and did well. And then you move on to the next job, which will pay better, since you now have that experience and refererences. Or if it doesn't, then the one after that. etc.
Anybody who thinks he can, or should, raise a family of four on one minimum-wage job, needs his head examined.
Sometimes responsible people, who waited until they could make enough money to raise a family decently, lose their jobs. And they take a lower-paying job, sometimes minimimum-wage, to tide them over until they can return to the level they had been making before. That makes for a difficult situation. They may have to go into debt, get charity from relatives and friends etc. to help out... but it's only temporary. The can and will get a better job in time, and clear up such matters. That's called "life".
If you can never get a job that pays more than minimum wage, and have no hope of advancement (unlike the guy described above)... what makes you think you can afford a family? They aren't free, you know. More mouths to feed, bigger house or apartment, more clothes etc.
Any politician who thinks you should be able to raise a family of four on one minimum-wage job, needs HIS head examined alongside yours.
Ditto for the people who vote for such politicians.
I beg to differ. Several members of my family have worked in minimum wage, fast food, type jobs their entire working lives. They have had families and cars and other manifestations of civilized living. There were not going to be any other kind of jobs available to them. Ever. You can in fact raise a family of four on one minimum wage job in many cities. What if two, adults each have a minimum wage job? What then? Most middle class white people cannot imagine such a scenario but it is par for the course in immigrant communities.
There is a book out by a young white woman. She and her husband each work a six figure job. She says having a child is impossible for her and her husband on their incomes... ... she's actually written a book on the impossibility of raising a child with less than 2M net worth on the east coast. So... white people delay child rearing until they are ~35 y.o. In lots of cases the guys are 50+. As a result LOTS of kids are now being born on the autism spectrum. They will never earn more than minimum wage, if in fact they are employable at all. 1 in 866 kids is now being born sub par in emotional and intellectual acumen because parents feel they need the financial security of decades in the job market before they can "exhale.
All labor should guarantee a living wage. An apprenticeship, maybe not, but an apprentice at least got room and board for their services. I recently finished a 9 month stint as an "intern" at a major university. In the IT dept. I had security clearances and passwords and the ability to do serious harm to the network infrastructure and it eventually became clear that they weren't going to give me a permanent position. You can argue that I was no good, but I would argue that I was, in fact, very, very good, otherwise, every day that I was on the network with my kind of access was a nightmare of liability that no sane IT manager would sanction.
In your world, bosses look forward to losing good employee's and help them find bigger and better opportunities with other employers... ... when you were writing that, didn't one of your hands reach up of its own volition and slap you across the face? Tell the truth. I can't believe your body is that dumb, even if your brain is. Your brain at least has the excuse that you are fed this Conservative tripe by your parents from the time you can process human speech.
Heads up, incoming! There are several places where the state mandated minimum wage is higher than the Federal Minimum Wage that Obama is concerned about. These states often have cost of living indexes such that their minimum wages amount to a living wage. If you want to think Obama needs his head examined, then you better plan to get real busy, because he is far from being the only or one of only a few mentally deranged politicians that are in need of psych evaluations. Just saying...
1. Locking into a building? As in you can't leave until they say or as you can't leave if you want to keep your job? If it is the former, well... I think we took care of slavery many many years ago. I have worked many jobs that say "you can't leave or you are fired", so I am not seeing an issue here.
2. Working overtime? Check, done that many times. Try working network engineering and get back to me about overtime.
3. Paid below a dollar. Well, let me put it this way, it ain't going to happen unless the economy allows it. ie, you aren't going to get people in the US working for under a dollar when you can't even buy a coke for a buck. Not going to happen if the person has a choice.
4. No emergency exits? Hs nothing to do with minimum wage and is an issue of city, county, and state safety codes. Not going to happen "legally" these days and if you are arguing "illegally", well... there really isn't a point to the argument.
5. No lunch, days off? Check, worked many jobs like this. In fact, it isn't uncommon for me to skip lunch and I have worked many days off where even being "sick" is frowned upon (ie they let you go if you call in sick).
Thing is, I never worked very long for a place that I didn't "choose" to work for based on my own reasons. In fact, when I look for work, I don't grovel hoping the business will be benevolent enough to grant me hire. I market myself, I interview them just as much as they interview me and if they don't meet my expectations, well... "I am sorry, but I am going to have to let you go".
I have worked everything from laboring in the fields picking vegetables, fruit, running harvesters, to working food service, pouring cement, and eventually desk based jobs.
People need to have more respect for themselves, put themselves into the equation as a product being marketed to a company as something of value. If you don't, you get stepped on, treated like you are a peasant and paid the same way.
For instance, I was the highest paid person in my IT department after only working there one year. Want to know why? Because I didn't treat my job as a gift, but as mutual transaction of services to which I argued my worth and haggled over value. Everyone else treated their work as if it were lordships, that they should be luck to have a job and they were treated exactly as that.
Fact is, nobody works for crap wages, poor conditions, etc.... permantely unless they CHOOSE to. If it turns out that this is the only type of work available, well... chances are because that is a fact... it IS the only viable work available because the economy is sunk and the system is in collapse. If that is the case, well... I will be working that sweat shop, but I can promise you, I won't be working it for very long.
The only reason to demand all this wage regulation is because it is feared that people will be too stupid refuse a bad deal. Granted, there are some people like that, which is why there was never any shortage of manipulated people in history.
Nomander, I have quoted this entire piece of self-serving claptrap so you might see it again, and upon further reflection, contemplate what you have said. Myself, I only will say this: you are politically aware enough to know that, despite the "official" unemployment rate of ~8%, you know that the unofficial, i.e. "actual" unemployment rate is much higher. Easily double, if not more. Nomander, given that reality. What are the chances that all those tens of millions of people CHOOSE to be unemployed?? I'm serious here. If its as easy as sliding into the chair in front of an interviewer and telling them how its going to be, and letting them know when you can start, why is anyone unemployed?? I'm really impressed that you are such a model of individual enterprise, integrity and character. Were but that we all couldn't be such model human beings. I for one admit to not making the cut. Google up the "Occam's Razor" postulate and read about the very low probability of everyone that is un or under employed, being so because of personal choices.
And interestingly, high tech employers in Washington cannot find qualified people to fill their massive full time and well paid job vacancies. Employers compete for talent, meaning they pay more than they would elsewhere. Tech, engineering and housing , not the minimum wage, drives the local economy in Washington.
What crap, any American would be an idiot to believe these Beltway Bandits want to give you a career. You'll do piice mill projects on one or two year Government Contracts. You'll be able to maybe see 5 if you are lucky 10 years of work before you will be on the street in a region where the cost of things is INSANE. Just think how comforting it is to face a rent of $1200 a month (even better if it the mortgage on a 400,000 townhouse) in Reston and you have just burned through the last of your 401K and severence pay (provided yoiu weren't terminated for cause). If you find yourself in this situation make sure you have a good supply of Prilosec OTC, a good sedative and a sleeping pill like Lunestra because you will need it. Now just how many 50 something programers, technical experts or engineers do you see working for these guys. There is nothing scarier to an employer than what a 50 something with health issues does to their insurance premiums!
In hard times people had smaller families, one kid vs two.
Immigrants have historically been high volume producers of children in all times, regardless of the economy. Our hard times were likely substantially better better times than in the old country.
The birth rate declined in the Great Depression and during WW2. It peaked during the 20 year prosperous period following WW2.
A serious problem. Is she capable of learning a trade that involves some skill?
BTW, why it that the government's business?
No, she is not capable of learning a trade at 35 years old. Could you? It's the governments business if the government wants it to be. There are plenty of places in the world where it isn't the governments business. We call those places Third World Hellholes with some justification. All the places where things are better, the government cares, a lot, in how individual citizens manage "life". America is the only place where people who are above the fray, argue for leaving those less fortunate to their fate. Europeans grumble about their high taxes but they don't actually succeed in getting their lawmakers to lower them and thus destroy the social safety net that makes their countries enviable places to live. The U.K. and America are fighting their socially motivated left wing, tooth and nail, to become like Chile or Argentina where kidnappings and home invasions of middle class citizens are rampant. I've never heard of a country, that, having clawed itself to civilization and a First World standard of living, wanted to go back to a dog eat dog, hardscrabble, I've got mine, you get lost, kind of paradigm.
What crap, any American would be an idiot to believe these Beltway Bandits want to give you a career. You'll do piice mill projects on one or two year Government Contracts. You'll be able to maybe see 5 if you are lucky 10 years of work before you will be on the street in a region where the cost of things is INSANE. Just think how comforting it is to face a rent of $1200 a month (even better if it the mortgage on a 400,000 townhouse) in Reston and you have just burned through the last of your 401K and severence pay (provided yoiu weren't terminated for cause). If you find yourself in this situation make sure you have a good supply of Prilosec OTC, a good sedative and a sleeping pill like Lunestra because you will need it. Now just how many 50 something programers, technical experts or engineers do you see working for these guys. There is nothing scarier to an employer than what a 50 something with health issues does to their insurance premiums!
Um... we were talking about the state of Washington, not DC.
No, she is not capable of learning a trade at 35 years old. Could you? It's the governments business if the government wants it to be. There are plenty of places in the world where it isn't the governments business. We call those places Third World Hellholes with some justification. All the places where things are better, the government cares, a lot, in how individual citizens manage "life". America is the only place where people who are above the fray, argue for leaving those less fortunate to their fate. Europeans grumble about their high taxes but they don't actually succeed in getting their lawmakers to lower them and thus destroy the social safety net that makes their countries enviable places to live. The U.K. and America are fighting their socially motivated left wing, tooth and nail, to become like Chile or Argentina where kidnappings and home invasions of middle class citizens are rampant. I've never heard of a country, that, having clawed itself to civilization and a First World standard of living, wanted to go back to a dog eat dog, hardscrabble, I've got mine, you get lost, kind of paradigm.
Why the hell isn't someone capable of learning a trade while in their 30's?
Have you also ever heard of a country that 'clawed itself to civilization' and didn't get on a path to economic crisis through big government? We are fighting to be Hong Kong, not Argentina.
Well last night the dumbass called for raising the minimum wage to a "livable wage".
Where do these morons get the notion that minimum wage is meant to be a living wage? It is an ENTRY level wage, it's not something meant to support your family on.
Minimum wage is for low to no skilled workers, nothing more nothing less. This is just another tactic designed to increase the costs incurred by business owners and will result on a net loss of jobs if this jackass gets his way.
The problem is that we have a lot of Americans refusing to work even if then can.
Raising minimum wage could attract some lazy ass to work.
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