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Many people who work in Wendys, McDonalds, Taco Bell, Panera Bread, Dunkin Donuts, etc. are too old for the military (many are in their 40s from what I can tell).
Other skills, that could work (met a supermarket cashier who's trying out pre-med and nursing soon enough), but still presents multitude of obstacles... paying off the college loans when the better job market's already saturated (making around $40K+, 100 to 1 applicants per position), some folks need to support kids and their college educations, and I'd hate to sound like I'm making excuses for them, but in some fields, learning a skill may not be enough when they want sheer experience to back that up.
We can go further than that... don't pay the president until he's out of office. That should give incentive to do a better job.
Fixing social security... make all Congressmen tied to it. If they had to take SS the way it is now, you can be sure they'll truly fix it.
There are also other jobs that pay more than minimum wage without having to work at fast foods that don't require a college degree.
My first job was a part-time fast food job for less than $100/week and 18-19 hours. Even though I started a new job, I was still applying for other higher paying entry level jobs.
After a month, I landed a full-time temp assignment to file papers. Salary jumped from $5.15/hr to $8.50/hr. After 3 weeks, they offered me a full time position. They had gone through several temps for a year, but most people don't take that job serious. They blow it off, because they won't be there in 4 weeks. I was the only one to clear up the backlog of files.
Full time job increased my gross paycheck from $99/week to $340/week. I was able to more than triple my salary, after only 1 month of working minimum wage.
I wasn't worried about 4-6 years of college. I had to get any entry level job that required minimum training and paid more than minimum wage. If it wasn't for the file clerk position, I would have gone into other restaurant(non-fastfood) jobs, construction, mom and pop establishments, etc.
So that article is taking evidence from a 2012 Buruea of Statistics I got news for you it is not 2012 anymore. I do not a study to tell me what I see all the time adults working at fast good, retail positions.
Um... My entire point was that the common talking point of
" insert X amount of people over 20 are making MW"
Is misleading because large segments of those people are not carrying their families. In many cases they're not even the secondary Income in their households.
My cousin is a perfect example. She's 21 and works at the gap as a cashier for like 9 dollars an hour. However she lives at home with my aunt who is a elementary school Principle and my uncle who is a electrician.
Ohio's former governor is taking a stand in favor of raising the minimum wage—by living on it himself. Ted Strickland tried restricting his spending last week to the $77 the wage offers, and by Thursday, he failed, he writes at Politico. The experience involved skipping meals, turning to unhealthy food, and walking to meetings because he couldn't afford other transportation, he writes.
It is not that hard. First off you need to
1. Share an apartment/home OR
2. Have a wife with a minimum wage
Also you need to move to a cheap area, then you won't struggle to live on minimum wage. Health care may be an issue due to rising cost from obamacare, and you may not be supported by medicaid. Then the solution is not have health care and claim hardship to avoid the fines. If you get sick, then get health care because they are not allowed to discriminate against preexisting conditions.
This has been done by a number of politicians over the years. Emory Barnes, the old NDP B.C. member of the legislature, and ex football player, did it in the eighties.
I've actually seen single parents do it in B.C., but the support network is pretty good up here.
One women actually got by on a widows pension, with a child, that was LESS than welfare.
But then again, she lived like a nun.
This is one of the reasons I advocate for a guaranteed annual income. The money goes back into the economy anyway.
There are a ton of pages of posts, but did anyone mention that most people that live on minimum wage don't live ON minimum wage?
Minimum wage qualifies a person for numerous subsidies, from decreased taxes to public housing to food stamps to subsidized insurance.
So by default, for most people living on minimum wage, the government is picking up the tab to bring them to a living wage type of situation.
I'm not saying that is the ideal situation but it's a little misleading to read articles about people who tried to live on minimum wage - and only minimum wage - and failed. I think most people who live on minimum wage would fail/be out on the street if they didn't have additional government subsidies.
The minimum wage was not meant to be a living wage because frankly those that are on it are the very young and without experience and/or an education.
I worked for it for awhile but found a better job. How? Because everyone I worked with wanted a better job so naturally by networking alone you can only go up. It's not like an employer is going to force you to stay.
We have to remember a few basics here.
1) If you raise the minimum wage those that are on it are STILL making minimum wage. A better idea would be for programs to increase job training. Otherwise these bad jobs are still bad jobs and are still dead end. Increasing minimum wage is treating the symptom and not the disease.
Not everyone on minimum wage is without experience, young or without an education. I know someone who had a MA and who was working in a deli in a supermarket. I don't make great money with my 15 years work experience and college, either. the problem is not as much the people as it is the business.
The business exists not to provide a service but to make money for its owner. That's all. That's the real basic no one seems to understand. A business owner will do anything for a profit. They don't care about providing anything to their workers OR customers which is why we have to have labor laws and consumer protection laws.
When you want to get rid of minimum wage, how about you throw out consumer protections (no one's forcing you to shop there, shop somewhere else) and labor standards (no one's forcing you to work there, work somewhere safer). Why force business owners to do anything at all except make money for themselves at any cost?
Why do you put so much on the worker and none on the business? We all accept that the purpose of a business is profit but we don't understand that workers work to make money. Business owners think workers just wake up desperate to put money into someone else's pocket? Do they get a thrill thinking about how many customer problems they can solve that day, or how they can help their boss have a fun vacation? No, workers work to make money so they can survive -- same as business owners.
Minimum wage exists because business owners will not voluntarily give up a DIME to ensure a fair wage. When people don't do things honestly and in good faith, you have to create laws which force them to.
Now we have folks saying min wage isn't "fair" -- to whom? The business owner? They don't have to hire workers -- they can do the work themselves if they don't want to pay for help. It works both ways. You don't want to pay someone, then do it yourself. See how far and rich you get when it is your own back doing the work. Apparently low wage jobs are so easy a monkey can do them - why not buy a few monkeys, then? Save yourself the hassle.
If people are not *worth* giving a minimum wage, then the business owners should do the work themselves and stop acting like someone OWES THEM a business. If you can't do your own work, don't have a business. No one owes you a living through owning a company.
If low wage jobs are SO EASY (and low wage workers are so stupid/unskilled/uneducated), business owners can certainly use their superior time management and other skills to handle the workloads alone. (Stop relying on other people to help you get what you want. Get out and work hard and achieve it alone.) What is good for the goose is also good for the gander.
This has already been said, but minimum wage isn't really the issue; the issue is job creation and business development. Companies can afford to hire more employees when the wage is relatively low. The solution, in my opinion, would be to lower minimum wage so that the companies would hire more employees and then allow those employees to get training for specialized fields that inherently pay higher wages. People will always need plumbers and electricians. One reason companies are so picky about who they hire now and are outsourcing much of their work is because of the cost of operation, including having to pay their workers a higher minimum wage. If the minimum wage were lowered, companies could afford to hire more people, and unemployment wouldn't be as high. I know it seems counter-intuitive, but if a company can afford to hire two guys for five dollars per hour versus having to hire one guy for ten dollars per hour, the company would take the chance on hiring the two guys. This means that a man who would otherwise be completely unemployed would get a shot at making some kind of living. Five dollars per hour is a lot better than zero per hour.
I realize that we can't allow companies to hire employees for slave wages, and in areas where the minimum cost of living is high, the wage should be high, too, but overall, I think lowering the minimum wage to a slightly more agreeable level and allowing the companies to hire more people could be a win for everyone. In return for the lower wage, companies could offer their employees more health benefits or perhaps even provide room and board. It's just a suggestion. Anything that would cut costs would probably be appreciated. A higher minimum wage sounds like a great idea, but it really just may lead to fewer people being hired. I think even huge penny-pinching conglomerations would relax their hiring criteria if they could get away with paying a lower wage.
But the other problem is frankly no one is a individual anymore.
If you were to go back in time a few decades and say at any moment I could take a photograph or video and share it will millions of people in minutes if not seconds they would have you sent to a nuthouse.
The internet pretty much took over as the primary source of information these days. Even on tv news anchors read off of tablets and laptops!
Just look at what I posted in Mass about Market Basket. 10,000 people protesting out of 25,000 for nearly two weeks now. They aren't union. I don't think that all of them can be fired because the WARN act might apply to such high numbers. With that being the case they'll continue to lose money (currently 9-11 million a day) So they might have to eat a cost of 270-330 million at that rate. There are signs, songs, t shirts, banners.
Milton Friedman did say that companies have a right to maximize profits in a sustainable manner.
There are a ton of pages of posts, but did anyone mention that most people that live on minimum wage don't live ON minimum wage? Minimum wage qualifies a person for numerous subsidies, from decreased taxes to public housing to food stamps to subsidized insurance.
Are you supporting that approach? If so, please make clear that you support society making up the difference for business' inadequate compensation by using whatever tax money is necessary to subsidize access of all workers to all the basics of life.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SquareBetterThanAll
I'm not saying that is the ideal situation but it's a little misleading to read articles about people who tried to live on minimum wage - and only minimum wage - and failed.
It isn't though. Even with all the subsidies that exist today, it is not possible for many people to afford the basics of life unless nothing ever goes wrong and everything always breaks right for them, and even then it isn't clear. While your support for public subsidization of those less fortunate affording the basics of life is notable, you need to admit that the subsidies available today don't assure all of those folks can afford all the basics of life completely. Our society falls short in that regard.
Furthermore, many people feel that society shouldn't be effectively subsidizing businesses that choose to pay inadequate wages - that jobs that essentially foster a deficit between what it costs to live in society and what the job pays are a drain on society rather than a support to society, and so society should disincetivize that kind of exploitation of society's largess by businesses.
Not everyone on minimum wage is without experience, young or without an education. I know someone who had a MA and who was working in a deli in a supermarket. I don't make great money with my 15 years work experience and college, either. the problem is not as much the people as it is the business.
The business exists not to provide a service but to make money for its owner. That's all. That's the real basic no one seems to understand. A business owner will do anything for a profit. They don't care about providing anything to their workers OR customers which is why we have to have labor laws and consumer protection laws.
When you want to get rid of minimum wage, how about you throw out consumer protections (no one's forcing you to shop there, shop somewhere else) and labor standards (no one's forcing you to work there, work somewhere safer). Why force business owners to do anything at all except make money for themselves at any cost?
Why do you put so much on the worker and none on the business? We all accept that the purpose of a business is profit but we don't understand that workers work to make money. Business owners think workers just wake up desperate to put money into someone else's pocket? Do they get a thrill thinking about how many customer problems they can solve that day, or how they can help their boss have a fun vacation? No, workers work to make money so they can survive -- same as business owners.
Minimum wage exists because business owners will not voluntarily give up a DIME to ensure a fair wage. When people don't do things honestly and in good faith, you have to create laws which force them to.
Now we have folks saying min wage isn't "fair" -- to whom? The business owner? They don't have to hire workers -- they can do the work themselves if they don't want to pay for help. It works both ways. You don't want to pay someone, then do it yourself. See how far and rich you get when it is your own back doing the work. Apparently low wage jobs are so easy a monkey can do them - why not buy a few monkeys, then? Save yourself the hassle.
If people are not *worth* giving a minimum wage, then the business owners should do the work themselves and stop acting like someone OWES THEM a business. If you can't do your own work, don't have a business. No one owes you a living through owning a company.
If low wage jobs are SO EASY (and low wage workers are so stupid/unskilled/uneducated), business owners can certainly use their superior time management and other skills to handle the workloads alone. (Stop relying on other people to help you get what you want. Get out and work hard and achieve it alone.) What is good for the goose is also good for the gander.
Great post!
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