A living wage does not include two cars. It should include one dependable car, money to pay for insurance, modest housing, adequate food, a night out once in awhile, internet access and computer, can get by without cellphone and cable tv. You can take classes on the internet to get a college degree, if they have your IQ.
See this is the crux of the matter. There were times recently when I didn't feel I could afford cable TV. There were other choices that I made. During one of those times I heard a "poor person" complain that she couldn't afford cigarettes and cable.
When I was just out of college and stupid, I didn't have health insurance. It was a rational choice based on my health.
If I am working at that level, internet access and a computer is something I should get FREE at the local library (my (sales) taxes are already paying for that).
See, your living wage reflects your choices and you impose them on your imaginary low wage person. However, there are millions and millions of people on low wages that don't fit your socialized mental map.
When the government starts imposing their mental map on each person then YES THAT IS MARXISM. And the inevitable result is tolitarianism because each person's choices will have to be taken away from him or her to attain that "ideal". Its all there in the history books, we don't have to make that mistake.
Says you as you sit at your own personal computer at home or are posting on your employer's time which technically is stealing unless you are self-employed. Since it is evening, I assume you are in your comfy home.
When I was just out of college and stupid, I didn't have health insurance. It was a rational choice based on my health.
Try going that route when you are on the downward slope past middle age and you will sing a different tune.
See, your living wage reflects your choices and you impose them on your imaginary low wage person. However, there are millions and millions of people on low wages that don't fit your socialized mental map.
My low wage people aren't imaginary. They are real. So you admit there millions and millions of people on low wages. Now we are getting somewhere. I'll bet you like to have them wait on you and clean up after you. I didn't make my socialized mental map. It was imposed on us. It is already here, not full-blown, but here nevertheless. It is making the richer richer and the poorer poorer.
When the government starts imposing their mental map on each person then YES THAT IS MARXISM. And the inevitable result is tolitarianism because each person's choices will have to be taken away from him or her to attain that "ideal". Its all there in the history books, we don't have to make that mistake.
They've (the government in case you think I'm referring to some imaginary group has already imposed that mental map on me in countless ways. Not only that, but they waste a lot of the money and vote themselves pay raises and don't show up to vote or represent us poorly until the few times we scream loudly enough. We have already made that mistake when we started social security. We compounded it when we started welfare and food stamps, incentives for illegitimacy, programs for the poor which means more government workers who get paid a living wage while the people they are hired to serve do not, programs to pay your utility bills in the winter, programs for just about anything you want if you are willing to spend your days making the rounds.
We also have bank failure bailouts, airline bailouts, hundreds of bailouts. If that isn't some form of socialism, I don't know what planet you live on.
And I haven't even started on welfare payments to other countries. That's a form of global socialism.
We're up to our eyeballs in it only nobody wants to call it for what it is because we still have Heinz ketchup who just laid off a bunch of well-paid workers in my area and moved operations elsewhere, probably overseas.
The only program we don't have is enforcing what used to be considered anti-monopoly laws.