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One-fourth of all jobs in this country pay close to minimum wage, i.e. no more than $10 per hour.
This is a lie, according to BLA and the Census Bureau. For all full time hourly and salary workers, the percent making at or below the minimum wage is less than 2%, and for all workers being paid, it is less than 1%.
Again, not a valid population to use when decrying the entire middle class.
This is a lie, according to BLA and the Census Bureau. For all full time hourly and salary workers, the percent making at or below the minimum wage is less than 2%, and for all workers being paid, it is less than 1%.
Again, not a valid population to use when decrying the entire middle class.
I found some numbers from WA state, it appears that just about 25% of the jobs pay $10 or less per hour, and for full time equivalent jobs, that bottom 25% pays up to about $15. But a lot of the crappier jobs don't offer full-time hours, so for those who want **** time work it's a double whammy of getting shorted on hours and on wage. Probably close to half of all jobs are in states with a higher minimum wage; so I expect more than 2% are being paid 'minimum wage'.
In my experience, there are some labor markets that just have an intractable surplus of low-skilled labor, which promotes minimum wage jobs, college towns often are good examples.
You having fun in Pauli-Land? Do you even work to earn a living?
Oh, I don't know. Some people wouldn't call it "work". But I drive 6-8 hours a day as a courier, and then have a 12 hour on-call shift for roadside assistance each day- 6 days a week. You know, when it's -4 degrees and the wind's blowing 20 mph and you run out of gas or hit a pothole and blow a tire, etc, etc, and you gotta call for help. I'm the guy that shows up.
Some call it "work", but I'm guessing folks like yourself who have shown us what tough working conditions are would probably call that "vacationing". And to think that that first dollar I make doing this has a 20+ percent tax bite. That is unbelievably discouraging.
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Many physicians including myself have actually been in and experienced these positions. And I can tell you from personal experience, that 30% rates are not high enough to prevent docs from pushing and coaxing up their income.
Well, good for you. I assume you spent your years in debt, risking your future on uncertain business propositions that made you toil 12 hours a day until success was achieved, or you went bankrupt and lost everything once or twice like a great lot of business owners have done, right? Or, maybe you took on many tens of thousands in gauranteed student loans, plugged your way through the classes and passed your boards and then got hired for a paycheck that earns in a day what I earn in a week or two and call it "struggling".
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Because we have, and I've done it many years. Physicians in many cases like my own are in a position to gain the additional income they desire by altering their practice. Longer hours, more patients, more complicated patients, more procedures, more hospital and consultation work and in house testing can be there essentially at the docs beck and call, or not. Today for me it's not if the effort is more than minimal. And I surely would not put in significant effort if I paid out 75% of earnings as tax.
Oh, so you admit my argument is true. You just have a different tolerance for theft than, say, I do. Maybe it's because your first dollar, middle dollar, and probably last dollar come a LOT easier than mine do.
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But as we speak Medicare has a new program for primary care docs to gain income with little physical input on my part. I probably pay on the order of 30% tax on my income. And you can bet that I will be grabbing for all those extra new Medicare bucks while they are hot!
Nothing like being handed someone else's (not the patient's) money, is there? Just understand some of that will be MY money.
I think most childless adults earning, say, $8/hr find income a greater barrier than spending to buying a home. You can live frugally, but earning $8/hr, you're generally not going to be well situated for buying a home.
Sure you are. But not when home prices have been inflated by the government sponsoring many trillions of dollars in easy loans to inflate the price out of sight.
??? Millions of American adults earn $8/hr and say no to themselves every day; one in four jobs today pay no more than $10 per hour. I have never earned as much as $9 per hour and I say no to myself all the time; I rent a freaking ROOM and don't have a car or TV.
Why is someone making $8 an hour able to pay rent (operating cost of housing plus landlord orofit) yet not be able to afford to buy the same housing? Owning is cheaper than renting in at least 48 of the 50 largest US housing markets, yet renters can't afford to own homes???
And there are plenty of people who can't afford a 3BR house on a quarter acre, but they CAN afford a 400-sf house on a 2,500-sf piece of land. Government is usually the only thing stopping these people from buying and owning homes. These people CAN afford X, but government prohibits the sale of X - this clearly is the fault of government and not of the person earning $8 per hour.
You CHOOSE where you live, and the constant whining about the outcome of your own choices is insanity.
??? When you're living on or near minimum wage, you probably can't afford a car, which means you probably can't afford to live in the country. Recently I found a Brookings paper about worker cost tradeoffs between housing (i.e. rent) and transportation (commuting). This has long been an interest of mine, as for some years I have entertained the notion that the lower working class is slowly being squeezed between unaffordable housing (which drives them to seek cheaper rents further away from their jobs) and the costs of longer commutes.
Turns out, according to Brookings, that this tradeoff generally does not succeed for low-wage workers because the increased commuting costs exceed the rent reductions achieved by moving further away from their jobs. For those without cars. commuting to work from a rural home generally isn't even an option.
Why on EARTH would you need to "commute" to a near-minimum-wage job?
Those are everywhere. Choose a cheap place to live and find a job near it if you're going to work at that as a career.
For that matter, if you have a decent computer, landline, and solid internet connection, there's dozens of companies hiring to work at home for anything from straight commission to about 12 / hr. And no special skills required, just a willingness to maintain a decent attitude, speak clearly, and actually work.
For starters, they probably would not have had close to the same access to computers and to intellectual input, generally, as they did; and they more likely would have worked crummy min wage jobs, leaving fewer hours available for tinkering with hardware and software.
Why on EARTH would you need to "commute" to a near-minimum-wage job?
Those are everywhere. Choose a cheap place to live and find a job near it if you're going to work at that as a career.
For that matter, if you have a decent computer, landline, and solid internet connection, there's dozens of companies hiring to work at home for anything from straight commission to about 12 / hr. And no special skills required, just a willingness to maintain a decent attitude, speak clearly, and actually work.
??? I've had one-hour bus commutes and half-hour car commutes to minimum wage jobs. Dang no landline in this house.
For starters, they probably would not have had close to the same access to computers and to intellectual input, generally, as they did; and they more likely would have worked crummy min wage jobs, leaving fewer hours available for tinkering with hardware and software.
Determined people make their own luck.
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