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78.5 Million were paid hourly. 870,000 received the minimum wage. 1.7M had wages BELOW the minimum wage. (2/3 are restaurant service industry) So 3.3% in 2015. Most are in their teens.
In 1979, the amount was 13.4%
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So the Bureau of Labor Services is telling us most people working minimum wage jobs are waitstaff and young.
So it's exactly what's needed. Starter jobs. And fewer people are on minimum wage. This is a good thing folks. Teenagers don't need living wages, they need opportunities to learn how to work.
Personally I can't wait to take a minimum wage job again when I'm old. If the jobs get too expensive they might not hire me in semi-retirement.
Sure I would work at a liquor store again if I had paid off everything and a million bucks in the bank and was a year away from social security, thats not really a good point though. Just to get the beer discounts and definitly not full time lol.
But yea when you are trying to buy a single family home, (have kids if thats in your plans), trucks, etc then its not so funny, you need real income to do that.
You can purchase a nice home in Cleveland for $100,000. That's a mortgage payment of $473 a month, if you could somehow buy with nothing down. If two adults can't make $473 a month, they have problems.
Of course, just having a degree doesn't mean anything. You have to be able to add value (a little value) to some business, government agency, or nonprofit organization. But it's not that hard - I see all kinds of incompetent people every day, working at jobs for which they get paid.
Except that cleavland sucks, its not exactly coure delain, bozeman, spokane, sedona, etc.
Except that cleavland sucks, its not exactly coure delain, bozeman, spokane, sedona, etc.
If you want to live in paradise, it will cost you.
Of course, Cleveland has its nice areas too... $95,000 lakefront condo, unobstructed lake view, 1 br is a little tight for a couple but my son and his wife live in something quite comparable.
78.5 Million were paid hourly. 870,000 received the minimum wage. 1.7M had wages BELOW the minimum wage. (2/3 are restaurant service industry) So 3.3% in 2015. Most are in their teens.
In 1979, the amount was 13.4%
---
So the Bureau of Labor Services is telling us most people working minimum wage jobs are waitstaff and young.
So it's exactly what's needed. Starter jobs. And fewer people are on minimum wage. This is a good thing folks. Teenagers don't need living wages, they need opportunities to learn how to work.
Personally I can't wait to take a minimum wage job again when I'm old. If the jobs get too expensive they might not hire me in semi-retirement.
All that is telling us how many people are at or below min wage it does not say how many are just above min wage but still in poverty. There not starter jobs for a lot of people because a lot of people can only do min wage jobs and like I said before there are not enough higher paying jobs for everyone.
Why do people think they deserve a better standard of living than what they can provide to themselves? Don't wait for someone to hand you a better life, it won't happen. This includes waiting for govt to hand you money, welfare/minimum wage/ubi/etc
Why should people have to reach your imaginary line of success just to survive? Seems you only see the world as black and white if you succeed it is because you work hard if you fail you did not try but that is not how the world works. Many times there are circumstances like intelligence,upbringing,luck that prevent people from doing more.
Why should people have to reach your imaginary line of success just to survive? Seems you only see the world as black and white if you succeed it is because you work hard if you fail you did not try but that is not how the world works. Many times there are circumstances like intelligence,upbringing,luck that prevent people from doing more.
um... it is pretty black and white in financial terms, you either have money for rent, or you don't and you have to figure out your living situation based on that
so do you get smarter if the minimum wage goes up? did you learn better money management skills? did you learn how to invest? how to buy real estate? all because you got a few extra $/hr?
does minimum wage make you luckier in life if it goes up?
what about upbringing, did you somehow rewrite your past and obtained a better upbringing when minimum wage goes up?
what does your statements even have to do with minimum wage?
no, some people are dumb, they are unlucky and they have poor families... the government can try to help that, its why we have welfare, why we have social services, why we have public schools all funded by taxes... but minimum wage is not going to help anyone get out of minimum wage jobs
Minimum wage debate is moot imo. I have not seen any business paying minimum wage (7.25 here) in a very long time. Even fast food restaurants start you out at $10 or so in my area. They can't get anyone out of bed to work for minimum wage.
We have a lot of warehouses being built in my area which pay more than fast food and retail. They employ most of the unskilled labor here. Hobby Lobby is offering $15 to start, Walmart offers $13 to work the night shift. The low wage employers have had to raise wages to compete for talent. That is the free market at work, no government intervention required.
I wonder how many of these people who struggle with food and shelter get new smartphones every year.
Quit with the smartphones already. I have a smart phone. It only cost me $20 in shipping and I put minutes on it when I need to (no plan). Right now I don't put that many minutes on it because I use Skype ($2.99 per month) for most of my phone calls. So yes, anyone can have a smart phone, but that doesn't mean they're throwing money away.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Humble and Kind
It's not the employer's responsibility to make sure you can afford a house, 2.5 kids, a dog, and a boat. It's time people become more responsible for THEMSELVES.
This is part of the problem. People like you and MLSfan seem to think everyone wants the sun and the stars and the moon with minimum wage. YOU'RE the one talking about a house and a boat. Those of us talking about minimum wage being a living wage are talking about being able to pay rent on a 1 bedroom apartment and still being able to afford utilities and food and to be able to put some money away in savings.
Where you guys get huge house and boat and new car and smart phones and $1500 computers and cable and everything else out of that, I just don't know, but you all seem to think that that's what we mean by a living wage, which is NOT true.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MLSFan
so... you applied for that job knowjng full well it is a tempoary job with the intention of leaving as soon as you get a better offer? and you wonder why they dont pay more?
Oh, come on now. In all the jobs I worked at, there was a ceiling that everyone hit after a certain amount of time if they worked at that business long enough. In other words, the company can't pay you more (when I worked at Kinko's, the ceiling for any store position was $12 an hour). That's true of many businesses. So if I told you that, you'd say to move on to another job that could pay me more.
And now here you are saying that if someone only works a job as a temporary stepping stone to a better job, that's why they don't get paid more than they do?
Well, which one is it? You can't have it both ways.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Larry Siegel
You can purchase a nice home in Cleveland for $100,000. That's a mortgage payment of $473 a month, if you could somehow buy with nothing down. If two adults can't make $473 a month, they have problems.
Of course, just having a degree doesn't mean anything. You have to be able to add value (a little value) to some business, government agency, or nonprofit organization. But it's not that hard - I see all kinds of incompetent people every day, working at jobs for which they get paid.
Not exactly.
I bought my house and land for $85,000. Now granted, I didn't have a large down payment and I demanded a fixed rate loan, so I got a 6% interest rate. But my payments were quoted to me as "$450 a month for 30 years". HA!
Dude, once you start adding insurance and taxes onto that amount, your payment will almost double. Mine was $738 per month. And property taxes do nothing but go up. PLUS the places that still have houses for only $100,000 these days aren't exactly job meccas. In a place where you find cheap housing like that, you also find people working for $7.25 an hour IF they can find a job. And IF they can find a job in the next large town over, now you have commute costs. Mine were almost $300 a month until I decided to drive only as far as there was public transportation, but that came at a cost as well.
I had thirty hour a week commutes and if I didn't catch the ferry on time to get to the last bus that ran, a taxi ride to my car cost me $22, not to mention how ticked off my manager was because I couldn't stay over for any reason and calling me in to fill for someone was at least four hours from the time I said I'd be there to the time I could actually get there. Which made me worthless as a fill-in and guess what - also didn't do wonders for any raises I might have gotten.
Someone has to serve you when you eat at Applebee's... someone has to make your food in the kitchen when you go out to eat... someone has to clean up the public restrooms... someone has to work at the Amazon warehouse... someone has to run the local Walmart... don't they deserve a decent standard of living? What about the people who provide those places in an expensive city like San Francisco, what are they supposed to do? They still need lower wage people in places like San Francisco. Not everyone can live in the boonies of Ohio where a federal minimum wage can pay rent when all the jobs are in... places like San Francisco.
Just a note that the minimum wage in San Francisco is currently $14 per hour. It rises to $15 per hour in 2018. The State of Ohio minimum wage is currently $8.15 per hour (applies to most workers, with the exception of businesses with annual receipts below an established amount, and young teens). It rises to $8.30 in 2018.
As I've previously posted, States and cities are free to enact a minimum wage higher than the Feds, if they see fit. And there a number of them (particularly high COL regions) that do.
This is part of the problem. People like you and MLSfan seem to think everyone wants the sun and the stars and the moon with minimum wage. YOU'RE the one talking about a house and a boat. Those of us talking about minimum wage being a living wage are talking about being able to pay rent on a 1 bedroom apartment and still being able to afford utilities and food and to be able to put some money away in savings.
Where you guys get huge house and boat and new car and smart phones and $1500 computers and cable and everything else out of that, I just don't know, but you all seem to think that that's what we mean by a living wage, which is NOT true.
.
I was only using that "phrase" as it was what I'd read a while back that the average family has 2.5 kids(no such thing as a half kid as we both know), a dog, and I threw in the boat for s's & giggles.
What I see most often is people living beyond their means. Doesn't matter what income they have, it all depends on the person.
Now, how am I part of the problem? How is MLSfan?
By reading some of the posts, some do want more than they can provide. I can relate, I used to be the same way.
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