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I agree with the general tone of your post, but your age is really showing here. Just about every job these days REQUIRES a person to apply online. I wonder what planet people are living on these days! I work in a library. Our library system's hours have been cut over the last few years, making it harder for people to use computers.
That could be.
Right now things are changing a lot.
Our local newspaper has no website, no email, no web presence at all.
However it is changing. I think most of the change is being driven by the chain stores.
Nationwide chains seem to be at the front of this movement. While most local businesses are not online yet.
I think I recently saw that around 40% of the population have computers now and are getting online.
Some places that I do business with are online already, though most are not, yet.
Minimum wage would be worth a lot more if Big Government didn't confiscate so much in Social Security and Medicare tax. Don't forget that the amount deducted on the paycheck is only HALF the tax; if the tax wasn't there, the minimum wage earner would be able to keep TWICE the amount that is deducted from his paycheck,
But the reason labor gets paid so little, is because the value of labor has been destroyed.
Agreed.
Quote:
Labor has no bargaining power, for (three) reasons.
1. Washington decided to open the floodgates to open-door immigration in 1965.
2. Washington pursued "Free Trade" and tax policies...
3. Poor and low skilled people continued to reproduce and -were encouraged to reproduce-
at levels the job market was CLEARLY moving away from at the same time that the educated
and economically stable clearly got the message to moderate their birth rates and mostly did so.
Like a snake after gorging ... we'll get to watch that statistical lump work it's way through.
Will we have the sense to take smaller bites in the future?
You need to understand what a "basic necessity" means. Just because you all dont WANT a landline, doesnt mean that if its all you can afford, then thats what you get. Wanting doesnt make for a necessity.
Internet is also not a necessity. If you are talking about looking for a job, then you can spend plenty of time at the library on the internet looking for a job. Once you have a job, you don't need the internet any more. Once again, not a necessity, but a want.
A car is NOT a necessity. There are a LOT of people in this world who do not have a car, but rely in public transportation. If it were a necessity, they couldnt do it.
Food, shelter...necessities.
Cell phones, internet.....luxuries. Tho to this generation of entitlement, they may disagree.
I agree.
There is a program called 'Lifeline' for low income people to get a telephone at a reduced cost.
With all the talk about raising the minimum wage, I think the real issue is that people are not getting a liveable wage anymore. This applies to many skilled people too in which their job tries to pay them $10-13hr for $20-30hr type of work.
Not everyone deserves a raise at walmart or other low paying jobs. I think everyone should atleast prove themselves for 6 months to year then start to gradually get a raise. You cant act a fool and get paid the same as people who work hard and try to move up in life. Even if walmart workers weren't making minimum wage and making $11hr, you cant really do much making 22k a year other than live in a cheap/borderline crime infested area
$11hr gets you about $1250 a month after taxes and health coverage at most jobs and ill list just the basic necessities in life
600 Rent
100 Utilities
200 Car Payment
150 Gas
125 Insurance
220 Food
50 Cell Phone
40 Internet
20 Home Alarm System or Gym membership EQUALS $1505 a month, with no cable TV, cooking your own food and not going out to eat, a cheap car payment, a basic cell phone plan, a basic home internet plan, and for $600 a month the place you live in might be in a high crime area unless you want to go the roommate route.
So at $11hr, you are $300 a month short of basic necessities, and means you are now taking public transit and the bus is now your best friend, just to break even.
So the minimum wage would have to be atleast $13hr just to be a livable wage for most people, but the the prices of everything would also go up, including rent since most landlords now you are good for a couple extra hundreds of dollars. Either way your back at square one and then people now making $13-20 hr will demand $20-30hr to separate their skills from minimum wage skills.
A car is not a necessity of life (Just move closer to work.) Neither is living without a roommate.
If you make $11 an hour, you're not supposed to have your own apartment. People having their own apartments like we expect today is extremely rare throughout the course of human history. Even in other developed countries, people don't have so much housing square footage as Americans do.
When I made more than $12 an hour more than 15 years ago, I rented a room in a house. That's what I could afford. I kept doing that for 8.5 more years until I had paid off my debts and had 100k saved in various accounts (retirement plan, savings account, savings bonds, etc.). THEN I went out and got my own apartment (and it was a studio, not a 1BR). At that point, I was making a good bit more than $12 an hour.
While I certainly agree $11 is not a lot of money, your definition of "the basics" is inflated.
This is the point everyone seems to miss. I have lived with roommates for 9 years and I'm still alive!!!!
A car is not a necessity of life (Just move closer to work.) Neither is living without a roommate.
Thats easier said than done. For example in metro Atlanta, many jobs went along with the white flight and moved too and are in areas where majority whites live and the MARTA train line stops right were that line begins to form. And apartments for 1 bedrooms close to those jobs on the Northside can be $700 for old apartments and typically $850 up to $1300 for a 1 bedroom and if you try to get a roommate, these apartments will make it $1500-1600 for 2 people to live there, so you still have to pay $7-800 to live near work in a safe area.
So if someone didnt have a car, this could be their commute considering our rail goes N/S/E/W and connect downtown:
15-20 min Bus ride to a train
20-40 min Train ride
15-40 min Bus ride to work
So the typical commute without a car would be 1 Hour up to 2 hrs each way when considering the wait time for the bus/trains as well. So there goes 4 hours of your day for commute if you dont have a car or have enough money to live by your job.
Food is not a necessity... plenty of garbage cans around. You live near a city many places throw out perfectly good grub at the end of the day.
Shelter...pfffft. A tent is just fine. No need for roomates either.
Car? Simply pitch the tent closer to work.
You want decent food, safe environment, and the ability to get to work? Please check your expectations at the door... this is America. You gotta work hard and make some intellegent choices to make that livable wage.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
44,585 posts, read 81,243,006 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mysticaltyger
I agree with the general tone of your post, but your age is really showing here. Just about every job these days REQUIRES a person to apply online. I wonder what planet people are living on these days! I work in a library. Our library system's hours have been cut over the last few years, making it harder for people to use computers.
True, if you cannot apply online you cannot apply at our company and most others around here. At the local Jr. High School every student is issued a laptop.
In our small city of 50,000 they recently built a new, much larger library to accommodate the number of patrons, despite the old one only being 10 years old. They have about a dozen computers but very few are used since most people are online at home or on mobile devices.
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