Even while living in said poverty, 98% of the poorest among us manage to afford a television, 78% manage to afford air conditioning, 64% pay for cable to go with that TV, 55% have cell phone service, and 29% have a video game system for that TV.
” I’m going to go ahead and venture that, yes, most Republicans would probably agree with Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn that a person that works a solid forty hours per week at an honest, productive job should not have to live in poverty.”
Depends if that person has any skills and/or education.
We wouldn’t want to overpay someone and hurt their self esteem.
Also, if these bastards would quit causing inflation then it wouldn’t be so expensive to live.
All jobs should pay an above average income.
$10/hr is $28,000 a year. Poverty level for one person is $11,490.
Perhaps they should get some education or develop a skill to improve their value.
here’s a hint for the moron sector supporting this bs
if you jack up minimum wage by 50%, you’re also jacking up union wages by 50% (they know this)... but it will also push inflation to increase costs on those various goods
value is value... and when you’re using a fiat currency, it fluctuates with the amount you print.
meanwhile, one ounce of gold will still buy one week of food and shelter for a family of four in a first world country. this hasn’t changed for a *very* long time.
The minimum wage is totally contrary to God’s Revealed Word and is a direct assault on liberty. Thank the evil Frances Perkins, playmate of Franklin Diablo Roosevelt, for this vile attack on freedom. She not only championed the minimum wage but was behind Marxist scams such as social security and the power yielded to Big Labor goons. Largely relegated to a minor historical figure, Perkins is in the ranks of Margaret Sanger and Michele Obama as truly satanic women.
Where is that to be found?
Not everyone earning a minimum wage can afford a new car, the latest smart phone or a 72 inch TV. Sorry.
A better method to eradicate poverty is emulate what is working in other countries.
For example in Singapore, tax rates are lower, and government benefits for working age people are few. There is no such thing as unemployment compensation. Result: they have so many jobs, they import 40% workers from other countries on 2 year work permits. Unemployment rate for Singapore citizens is under 2% which are mostly people in transition from one job to another. The infrastructure makes USA look like a third world country. The airport, highways, cruise terminal, are ultra modern and beautiful.
Even while living in said poverty, 98% of the poorest among us manage to afford a television, 78% manage to afford air conditioning, 64% pay for cable to go with that TV, 55% have cell phone service, and 29% have a video game system for that TV.
$10, 10%, what’s the difference ....
It might help more if grocerys and gas weren’t sky high.
Stories like this make me feel good about my decisions. I have some college, no certs, and no formal training yet I still pull between 25 and 30 an hour through my hard work and experience in technology. It took a hell of a lot of work, plus the internet, to get where I am today. I’ve worked many different fields and jobs which have all lead to my success in being hard working and well rounded. It has not been easy but I am supporting my family. My fiance is about the same. Her education is about the same and she worked her way from a lowly admin to a director or marketing. She did it all by working her butt off and never backing down from a challenge. There are unlimited opportunities, thanks to the internet, to build job skills and personal worth through developing critical and needed skills. Hell Microsoft is giving away their training courses for their IT training programs. They knowledge is free, though the exams are not. I’m finally starting to work on my certs and saving money for the tests.
Christians would work for nothing..if possible. Otherwise, working for what the business offers is either acceptable or not. Minimum wages are just the Governments way of interfering into business decisions. Yes, I believe that if there were no minimum wages, jobs would increase. It’s called ad minimum wage for a reason - poor skills. When they become proficient, they usually get much more anyway because they benefit the bottom line.
We need a healthy, free economy where there are opportunities for people to advance out of minimum wage jobs.
Good time to raise this rarely-observed point:
A huge factor in the “living wage” issue is that anything less than relative luxury is practically illegal. Comfortable heating/cooling, running drinking water, flush-and-forget sanitation, electricity, refrigeration, electric lighting, etc are required in most jurisdictions to the point of their absence being actionable. Many areas view a lack of attached indoor parking, HVAC, TV, generous distances between buildings, etc as grounds for condemning a property. We’re coming to view first-world health care as a positive right (to wit: taxpayers must fund & facilitate it), food & education practically has been for about a century, and a plethora of special interests are pushing their own pet “positive rights”. Access to, if not outright ownership of, transportation capable of relocating you 1000 miles in one day flat for less than a week’s wage is axiomatic.
It’s friggin’ expensive to live at least well enough to not invite eviction or incarceration ... and guess which end of the political spectrum is largely responsible for imposing those demands on everyone, “poor” included?
In Scripture, anything construable (to which I consent only for sake of present argument) as a low-end “living wage” would cover little more than a tent, blanket, fire fuel, and mediocre-quality calories. 2000 calories a day and a dry place to sleep was all anyone could expect others to facilitate, and even that would be provided on the assumption you’d pay for it with 2000 calories of effort and live within walking distance of your employment.
Scripture notes (paraphrased) “you don’t work, you don’t eat” - and remember that “eat” could easily be little more than bread and wine, and those the end product of $0.25 of flour and a flask of self-fermented grape juice. At that rate, a “minimum wage” amounted to about $2/day ... which, of note, is world median income.
A high minimum wage enables the big-government/big-corporate crony-fascist complex to eliminate competition from small businesses.
Sorry, but if you don't produce enough to avoid living in poverty, no one can afford to pay you enough to avoid poverty. It ought to be obvious even to a liberal that no employer can pay an employee more than the productivity of that employee.
Some people apparently look upon employment as a paternalistic arrangement, in which the fatherly employer supports the employee, regardless of how much or how little the employee produces. Something like the allowances my children received for doing chores around the house.
Well, it isn't. Out of revenue from sales, the employer must pay wages, pay for raw materials, pay for utilities, pay taxes, and if there's anything left over, pay the owners (paying himself if the employer is also the owner). All these other factors of production are entitled to the market value of their contributions to production. Paying an employee more than the market value of his labor services is the road to bankruptcy.
If the market value of an employee's labor services are not enough to keep him out of poverty, then his only solution is to enhance the value of those services. Putting his employer out of business helps nobody.
Why do we allow employers to pay different salaries?
What is the job worth? How much is hand cleaning pennies supposed to pay?
Or as a real example why is it wrong to pay a penny per for someone to scrape used bricks clean?