The real “minimum wage” is zero.
Ask the geniuses at MIT to determine what the prevailing minimum wage would be without 40 million illegals. Wages have been stagnant since **1974**
Is there any job paying the state’s minimum hourly wage? Here in the 2nd most impoverished district in the USA, located in northeast Kentucky, I don’t know of any company that is paying the minimum wage. My young daughter has worked at several places and the prevailing wage is $15/hr. Only one small grocery store was less than the $15.
After I read in January 2022 that “Congress created the Affordable Connectivity Program, a new long-term, $14 billion program, with “new ways to qualify for the Affordable Connectivity Program such as: receiving WIC benefits or having an income at or below 200% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines [levels],” then I decided to investigate some of this growing dependency upon government (which is to be obeyed except when in conflict with the Bible).
Which dependence, among other things, fosters increasing assent to government support of perversions of what God instituted (including innocent life, as with the unborn, being protected versus at least 20% of pregnancies ending in murder by abortion, and with male and female being biological terms, and only these two being sexually joined, only in marriage, versus fostering fornication and essentially requiring affirmation of homosexual unions, despite the profound negative effects on individuals and society of fornication, in health, lives, souls and money (extensive documentation).
Note that about the time of this writing, the national debt stood at over 29 trillion dollars (1-15-22 [31.5 in summer of 2023]) and rising, yet partly due to Covid-19 and supererogatory measures (both are judgments from God) to control it, 61% of Americans paid no federal income taxes in 2020.
Reading “200% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines” promoted me to investigate that first, and which means, for instance, that while for a household of three the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) would be $21,960 yet 200% of the FPL would be $43,920 (compared with $29,646 last year), and would qualify that household for $30 a month discount for high-speed Internet and “eligible households also can receive a onetime discount of up to $100 to purchase a laptop, desktop computer or tablet from participating providers if the consumer contributes $10 to $50 toward the purchase price.” “The $14.2 billion Affordable Connectivity Program is just a part of roughly $65 billion to improve access to high-quality, high-speed internet access contained in the bipartisan infrastructure bill that President Joe Biden signed into law Nov. 15.” (https://www.aarp.org/home-family/personal-technology/info-2021/fcc-subsidy-helps-broadband-internet-access.html)
However, as reported here, the official poverty measure is based on cash income only, which fails to capture all the resources available to a family including tax credits and in-kind transfers. Also, the official measure of family resources is biased due to under-reporting of certain types of income that are commonly received by those with low reported income.
What are Federal Poverty Guidelines/Levels (FPL)?
The Federal Poverty Guidelines are federally set “poverty lines” that indicate the minimum amount of annual income that an individual / family needs to pay for essentials, such as housing, utilities, clothing, food, and transportation. These guidelines, also called Federal Poverty Levels (FPLs), are based on the size of a household and the state in which one resides. FPLs are the same in 48 of the 50 states. The two exceptions are Alaska and Hawaii, which have higher Federal Poverty Levels due to the higher cost of living. As an example, in 2021, the annual FPL for an individual in Alaska was $16,090, in Hawaii it was $14,820, and in the remainder of the states it was $12,880...
More at link.
It's not supposed to, it's just a starting point.
The living is wage is what you earn when you work hard and the the harder you work with goals in mind the better you do.
A starting job you don’t live on you learn on. If you never learn you shouldn’t earn.
Why would it be an employer’s responsibility to provide a “living wage”? What about the majority of people who create NO jobs and pay no wages at all?
People without enough income to live by themselves should go in with roommates or family to share costs, or join a commune. Might be a good idea to develop skills that command higher compensation.
In many cases, American businesses must also compete with foreign workers who get paid much less than our minimum wage.
Also, general-purpose robotics and machine learning will soon be replacing human workers, starting where there is the highest return on investment.
And robots will work longer hours and with greater efficiency than humans.
We are living in interesting times.
I call BS. Entry level HS dropouts are making over minimum wage in this economy.
If they want truth… it’s just the opposite. Increasing these wages drove up costs and even congress approved themselves a raise although they are not highly regarded as the representatives of the self governed citizens.
Any time a democrat starts talking about living wages, it is the union democrat money laundering they are really referring to.