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Author Topic:   Minimum Wage
Eleanore
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From: Okinawa, Japan
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posted April 07, 2006 06:13 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Eleanore     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/issueguides_minwage_minwagefaq

Last updated January 2006

Who are minimum wage workers?
An estimated 7.3 million workers (5.8% of the workforce) would benefit from an increase in the minimum wage to $7.25 by June 2007. Of these workers, 72.1% are adults and 60.6% are women. Close to half (43.9%) work full time and another third (34.5%) work between 20 and 34 hours per week. More than one-third (35%) of the workers who would benefit from an increase to $7.25 are parents of children under age 18, including 760,000 single mothers. The average minimum wage worker brings home about half of his or her family's weekly earnings.

What is the difference between the minimum wage and a living wage?
The federal minimum wage is a wage floor of $5.15 an hour that applies to almost all workers. Thirteen states and the District of Columbia have set a minimum wage that is higher than the federal minimum wage. A "living wage" is a term often used by advocates to point out that the federal minimum wage is not high enough to support a family. Some advocates have attempted to calculate a living wage based on an income that would provide for a family's basic needs (see EPI's "How Much is Enough?" for a discussion of "basic family budget" measures). These "living wages" are generally much higher than the minimum wage. Living wages also commonly refer to wages set by local ordinances that cover a specific set of workers, usually government workers or workers hired by businesses that have received a government contract or subsidy.

Why do we need a minimum wage increase?
A minimum wage increase of $2.10 by 2007 would raise the wages of 7.3 million workers. A minimum wage increase is needed to restore the minimum wage to historic levels. The inflation-adjusted value of the minimum wage is 26% lower in 2004 than it was in 1979. In addition, comparing the wages of minimum wage workers to average hourly wages, we find that the wages of minimum wage workers have not kept up with the wages of other workers. The minimum wage is 33% of the average hourly wage of American workers, the lowest level since 1949.

Congress has not increased the minimum wage in seven years—the second-longest stretch of government inaction since the minimum wage was enacted in 1938. When Congress does not increase the minimum wage, the minimum wage continues to lose value.

Can a worker support a family on the minimum wage?
One way to answer this question is to ask whether a full-time worker earning the minimum wage would have an income below the federal poverty line. A full-time worker (working 2,080 hours a year) earning $5.15 an hour would earn $10,712 a year, well below the 2003 federal poverty line of $14,824 for a family of three. However, there are several factors that complicate this analysis. First, not all workers can find full-time work, and others are unable to balance full-time work with family responsibilities. Second, federal programs such as the EITC and food stamps boost the reported incomes of working families. And third, the federal poverty line is viewed by many as an inadequate measure of the income needed to support a family.

Taking into account the EITC, the current minimum wage is still inadequate to support a single parent with two children. In 2003, a single parent working full time with two children would have a combined earnings and tax credit of $14,097, only 95% of the 2003 poverty threshold of $14,824 for a family of three. The proposal to raise the minimum wage to $7.25 fixes this problem. If the minimum wage were increased to $7.25 by 2007, the minimum wage and the EITC would work in tandem to raise this family's income to $17,790, which is 16% above the estimated 2005 poverty line of $15,317. It would still, however, be much lower than the income needed to support a family as calculated by "family budget" measures of poverty, which range from $23,000 to $46,000 for a family of three.

Will a minimum wage increase reduce poverty?
In the past, the minimum wage has been limited in its effects on poverty because many poor families did not have any family members in the paid labor force. However, as welfare reform forces more poor families to rely on their earnings from low-paying jobs, a minimum wage increase is likely to have a greater impact on reducing poverty.

The minimum wage has already proven helpful to former welfare recipients who are entering the workforce. A study of a 1999 state minimum wage increase in Oregon found that as many as one-half of the welfare recipients entering the workforce in 1998 were likely to have received a raise due to the increase. After the increase, the real hourly starting wages for former welfare recipients rose to $7.23.

Another study found that federal minimum wage increases in the 1990s have reduced poverty rates (Addison and Blackburn 1999). Yet another study found that a minimum wage increase from $5.15 to $6.15 would lift nearly 900,000 people out of poverty (Sawhill and Thomas, 2001).

In addition, the minimum wage raises the wages of low-income workers in general, not just those below the official poverty line. Many families move in and out of poverty, and near-poor families are also important beneficiaries of minimum wage increases.

However, it is also important to keep in mind that while the minimum wage is a crucial tool in the effort to end poverty, it is only one part of a larger anti-poverty strategy.

Is the EITC a more effective anti-poverty tool than the minimum wage?
The federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) combined with the minimum wage helps to reduce poverty, but the EITC is not a replacement for a minimum wage increase. The Earned Income Tax Credit is a popular federal anti-poverty program and an important piece of the ongoing strategy to make work pay. One reason for the EITC's popularity is that it is based on family income and is therefore well-targeted to poor families. In addition, it encourages work because the wage subsidy increases with earnings until it reaches the maximum credit level. The EITC and minimum wage work in tandem to raise a family's income. The effectiveness of the EITC in raising the incomes of the working poor above the poverty line therefore depends, in part, on regular increases in the minimum wage. This is because the EITC and the poverty threshold both rise each year to reflect increases in the cost of living, but the federal minimum wage does not. The EITC alone is not enough to keep a family above the poverty line, and a minimum wage worker gets further away from the poverty line each year the minimum wage is not increased.

If the minimum wage is raised to $7.25 by 2007, these two policies would work in tandem to raise the family's income to $17,790, 16% above the poverty line of $15,317 for a family of three. While they would certainly have a difficult time making ends meet at that income level (less than $18,000), the addition of over $3,500 in net income (i.e., an increase in minimum wage minus payroll taxes) and over $4,000 tax credit would be a significant improvement. A proposal that sets annual increases to the federal minimum wage to adjust for changes in the cost of living would ensure that the combination of full-time work and the EITC would always keep this family above the poverty line.

Does the minimum wage cause job loss?
A 1998 EPI study failed to find any systematic, significant job loss associated with the 1996-97 minimum wage increase. In fact, following the most recent increase in the minimum wage in 1996-97, the low-wage labor market performed better than it had in decades (e.g., lower unemployment rates, increased average hourly wages, increased family income, decreased poverty rates). Studies of the 1990-91 federal minimum wage increase, as well as to studies by David Card and Alan Krueger of several state minimum wage increases, also found no measurable negative impact on employment. Finally, a recent Fiscal Policy Institute (FPI) study of state minimum wages found no evidence of negative employment effects on small businesses.

New economic models that look specifically at low-wage labor markets help explain why there is little evidence of job loss associated with minimum wage increases. These models recognize that employers may be able to absorb some of the costs of a wage increase through higher productivity, lower recruiting and training costs, decreased absenteeism, and increased worker morale.

What would the minimum wage be worth today if it had kept its 1979 purchasing power?
If the minimum wage in 1979 had been indexed for inflation, it would be $6.92 today (2004 dollars). In other words, the inflation-adjusted minimum wage is 26% lower today than in 1979.

Why doesn't the minimum wage keep up with inflation?
The minimum wage is not indexed to inflation. It is up to Congress to determine when the minimum wage increases and by how much. Congress has not passed increases to help the minimum wage keep up with inflation. The result is a minimum wage that, when adjusted for inflation, is worth 26% less today than it was in 1979. In fact, $5.15 today is the equivalent of only $4.23 in 1995—lower than the $4.25 level before the 1996-97 increase. Therefore, the impact of the last minimum wage increase in 1996-97 has been completely eroded by subsequent inflation. Some advocates would like Congress to pass a law indexing the minimum wage to inflation, but others argue that the minimum wage needs to be raised to an adequate level first (for example, by restoring it to its 1979 level).

How is the minimum wage determined?
The minimum wage is a provision of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). This law, which was passed in 1938, set a minimum wage of $0.25 per hour and also set standards regarding overtime pay and child labor. Minimum wage increases are passed at the will of Congress as amendments to the FLSA.

Original proposals for the FLSA provided for a commission that would set the minimum wage after a public hearing and consideration of cost-of-living estimates provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In this way, the minimum wage would have been updated according to changes in the standard of living and inflation. However, the version of the FLSA that passed set a specific rate and had no provisions regarding updating the minimum wage.

Therefore, any increases in the minimum wage are based solely on the political climate and congressional agreement that an increase is needed. The frequency of minimum wage increases has varied; for example, in the 1970s, there were five increases to the minimum wage, but during the 1980s there were only two increases.

Is every worker covered by the minimum wage?
The minimum wage law (the Fair Labor Standards Act) applies to employees of companies with revenues of at least $500,000 a year. It also applies to employees of smaller firms if the employees are engaged in interstate commerce or in the production of goods for commerce. Also covered are employees of federal, state, or local government agencies, hospitals, and schools. The law generally applies to domestic workers.

The FLSA contains a number of exemptions from the minimum wage that may apply to some workers. The law establishes a youth sub-minimum wage of $4.25 that employers can pay employees under 20 years of age during their first 90 consecutive calendar days of employment with an employer. Certain full-time students, student learners, apprentices, and workers with disabilities may be paid less than the minimum wage under special certificates issued by the Department of Labor. More information on other exempt workers is available from the Department of Labor, Wage, and Hour Division http://www.dol.gov./esa/minwage/q-a.htm.

Does my state have a higher minimum wage level than the federal minimum wage?
States can set a minimum wage higher than the federal minimum wage. Currently, almost half of the U.S. population lives in states with minimum wages higher than the federal rate of $5.15. As of January 1, 2006, seventeen states and the District of Columbia have enacted higher minimum wages. These states include: Alaska ($7.15), Connecticut ($7.40), California ($6.75), Delaware ($6.15), the District of Columbia ($7.00), Florida (6.40), Hawaii ($6.25), Illinois ($6.50), Maine ($6.50), Massachusetts ($6.75), Minnesota ($6.15), New Jersey (currently $6.15, set to increase to $7.15 on October 1, 2006), New York ($6.75), Oregon ($7.50), Rhode Island ($6.75), Vermont ($7.25), Washington ($7.63), and Wisconsin (currently $5.70, set to increase to $6.50 on June 1, 2006). Florida, Oregon and Washington all annually adjust their minimum wages for inflation. Vermont will begin annually adjusting their minimum wage level on January 1, 2007. See Table 6 for the most up-to-date state minimum wage rates.

Do other countries have minimum wage laws?
Most industrialized countries have laws setting a minimum wage, but these laws vary greatly by who is covered and how strictly the law is enforced. In some countries, the minimum wage is not universal for the whole country, but varies according to the industrial sector or the worker's age and gender.


Sources

Addison, John, and McKinley Blackburn. "Minimum Wages and Poverty." Industrial and Labor Relations Review. Vol. 53, No. 3.

Appelbaum, Eileen, et al. 2004. The Minimum Wage and Working Women.

Bernstein, Jared, Heidi Hartmann, and John Schmitt. The Minimum Wage Increase: A Working Woman's Issue. Washington, D.C.: Economic Policy Institute, 1999.

Bernstein, Jared, and Chauna Brocht. 2000. The Next Step: The New Minimum Wage Proposals and the Old Opposition. Washington, D.C.: Economic Policy Institute.

Bernstein, Jared. Minimum Wages and Poverty. Economic Policy Institute, 1999.

Bernstein, Jared. Another Modest Minimum Wage Increase. Economic Policy Institute, 1998.

Bernstein, Jared, and John Schmitt. Making Work Pay: The Impact of the 1996-97 Minimum Wage Increase. Economic Policy Institute, 1998.

Chasanov, Amy. No Longer Getting By: An Increase in the Minimum Wage Is Long Overdue. Washington, D.C.: Economic Policy Institute. 2004.

Department of Labor Web page. http://www.dol.gov/dol/topic/wages/minimumwage.htm.

Fiscal Policy Institute. 2004. State Minimum Wages and Employment in Small Business. Available at www.fiscalpolicy.org.

Grossman, Jonathan. "Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938: Maximum Struggle for a Minimum Wage." Monthly Labor Review, 1978.

Levin-Waldman, Oren. The Minimum Wage Can be Raised: Lessons From the 1999 Levy Institute Survey of Small Business. Levy Institute, 1999.

Rasell, Edith, Jared Bernstein, and Heather Boushey. 2000. Step Up, Not Out: The Case for Raising the Federal Minimum Wage for Workers in Every State. Washington, D.C.: Economic Policy Institute.

Sawhill, Isabel and Adam Thomas. 2001. "A Hand Up for the Bottom Third." Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution.

Thompson, Jeff. Oregon's Increasing Minimum Wage Brings Raises to Former Welfare Recipients and Other Low-Wage Workers without Job Losses. Oregon Center for Public Policy, 1999.

For a closer look at research on the minimum wage, see EPI's publications No Longer Getting By, Employment and the Minimum Wage, Making Work Pay, The Next Step, Minimum Wages and Poverty, and The Minimum Wage: A Working Woman's Issue.


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"To learn is to live, to study is to grow, and growth is the measurement of life. The mind must be taught to think, the heart to feel, and the hands to labor. When these have been educated to their highest point, then is the time to offer them to the service of their fellowman, not before." - Manly P. Hall

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goatgirl
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posted April 07, 2006 10:34 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Nickel and Dimed
On (Not) Getting By in America
by Barbara Ehrenreich

"Barbara Ehrenreich is the Thorstein Veblen of the twenty-first century. And this book is one of her very best -- breathtaking in its scope, insight, humor, and passion."
--Arlie Russell Hochschild

Millions of Americans work full-time, year-round, for poverty-level wages. In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that a job -- any job -- could be the ticket to a better life. But how does anyone survive, let alone prosper, on six to seven dollars an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich left her home, took the cheapest lodgings she could find, and accepted whatever jobs she was offered as a woefully inexperienced homemaker returning to the workforce. So began a grueling, hair raising, and darkly funny odyssey through the underside of working America.

Moving from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, Ehrenreich worked as a waitress, a hotel maid, a cleaning woman, a nursing home aide, and a Wal-Mart sales clerk. Very quickly, she discovered that no job is truly "unskilled," that even the lowliest occupations require exhausting mental and muscular effort. She also learned that one job is not enough; you need at least two if you intend to live indoors.

Nickel and Dimed reveals low-wage America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity -- a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate stratagems for survival. Read it for the smoldering clarity of Ehrenreich's perspective and for a rare view of how "prosperity" looks from the bottom. You will never see anything -- from a motel bathroom to a restaurant meal -- quite the same way again.

"I was absolutely knocked out by Barbara Ehrenreich's remarkable odyssey. She has accomplished what no contemporary writer has even attempted -- to be that 'nobody' who barely subsists on her essential labors. Nickel and Dimed is a stiff punch in the nose to those righteous apostles of 'welfare reform.' Not only is it must reading but it's mesmeric. You can't put the damn thing down. Bravo!" --Studs Terkel

"Entering the world of service work, Barbara Ehrenreich folded clothes at Wal-Mart, waitressed, washed dishes in a nursing home, and scrubbed floors on her hands and knees. Her account of those experiences is unforgettable -- heart-wrenching, infuriating, funny, smart, and empowering. Few readers will be untouched by the shameful realities that underlie America's economy. Vintage Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed will surely take its place among the classics of underground reportage." --Juliet Schor

"With this book Barbara Ehrenreich takes her place among such giants of investigative journalism as George Orwell and Jack London. Ehrenreich's courage and empathy bring us face-to-face with the fate of millions of American workers today." --Frances Fox Piven

"Drunk on dot-coms and day trading, America has gone blind to the downside of its great prosperity. In Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich expertly peels away the layers of self-denial, self-interest, and self-protection that separate the rich from the poor, the served from the servers, the housed from the homeless. This brave and frank book is ultimately a challenge to create a less divided society." --Naomi Klein

"A brilliant on-the-job report from the dark side of the boom. No one since H. L. Mencken has assailed the smug rhetoric of prosperity with such scalpel-like precision and ferocious wit." --Mike Davis

"Millions of Americans suffer daily trying to make ends meet. Barbara Ehrenreich's book forces people to acknowledge the average worker's struggle, and promises to be extremely influential." --Lynn Woolsey, member of congress

"One of the great American social critics has written an unforgettable memoir of what it was like to work in some of America's least attractive jobs. No one who reads this book will be able to resist its power to make them see the world in a new way." --Mitchell Duneier

Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of Blood Rites; The Worst Years of Our Lives (a New York Times bestseller); Fear o Falling, which was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award; and eight other books. A frequent contributor to Time, Harper's Magazine, The New Republic, The Nation, and The New York Times Magazine, she lives near Key West, Florida.

Excerpt from the book:

one

Serving in Florida

Mostly out of laziness, I decide to start my low-wage life in the town nearest to where I actually live, Key West, Florida, which with a population of about 25,000 is elbowing its way up to the status of a genuine city. The downside of familiarity, I soon realize, is that it's not easy to go from being a consumer, thoughtlessly throwing money around in exchange for groceries and movies and gas, to being a worker in the very same place. I am terrified, especially at the beginning, of being recognized by some friendly business owner or erstwhile neighbor and having to stammer out some explanation of my project. Happily, though, my fears turn out to be entirely unwarranted: during a month of poverty and toil, no one recognizes my face or my name, which goes unnoticed and for the most part unuttered. In this parallel universe where my father never got out of the mines and I never got through college, I am "baby," "honey," "blondie," and, most commonly, "girl."

My first task is to find a place to live. I figure that if I can earn $7 an hour -- which, from the want ads, seems doable -- I can afford to spend $500 on rent or maybe, with severe economies, $600 and still have $400 or $500 left over for food and gas. In the Key West area, this pretty much confines me to flophouses and trailer homes -- like the one, a pleasing fifteen-minute drive from town, that has no air-conditioning, no screens, no fans, no television, and, by way of diversion, only the challenge of evading the landlord's Doberman pinscher. The big problem with this place, though, is the rent, which at $675 a month is well beyond my reach. All right, Key West is expensive. But so is New York City, or the Bay Area, or Jackson, Wyoming, or Telluride, or Boston, or any other place where tourists and the wealthy compete for living space with the people who clean their toilets and fry their hash browns. Still, it is a shock to realize that "trailer trash" has become, for me, a demographic category to aspire to.

So I decide to make the common trade-off between affordability and convenience and go for a $500-a-month "efficiency" thirty miles up a two-lane highway from the employment opportunities of Key West, meaning forty-five minutes if there's no road construction and I don't get caught behind some sundazed Canadian tourists. I hate the drive, along a roadside studded with white crosses commemorating the more effective head-on collisions, but it's a sweet little place -- a cabin, more or less, set in the swampy backyard of the converted mobile home where my landlord, an affable TV repairman, lives with his bartender girlfriend. Anthropologically speaking, the trailer park would be preferable, but here I have a gleaming white floor and a firm mattress, and the few resident bugs are easily vanquished.

The next piece of business is to comb through the want ads and find a job. I rule out various occupations for one reason or another: hotel front-desk clerk, for example, which to my surprise is regarded as unskilled and pays only $6 or $7 an hour, gets eliminated because it involves standing in one spot for eight hours a day. Waitressing is also something I'd like to avoid, because I remember it leaving me bone-tired when I was eighteen, and I'm decades of varicosities and back pain beyond that now. Telemarketing, one of the first refuges of the suddenly indigent, can be dismissed on grounds of personality. This leaves certain supermarket jobs, such as deli clerk, or housekeeping in the hotels and guest houses, which pays about $7 and, I imagine, is not too different from what I've been doing part-time, in my own home, all my life.

So I put on what I take to be a respectable-looking outfit of ironed Bermuda shorts and scooped-neck T-shirt and set out for a tour of the local hotels and supermarkets. Best Western, Econo Lodge, and Hojo's all let me fill out application forms, and these are, to my relief, mostly interested in whether I am a legal resident of the United States and have committed any felonies. My next stop is Winn-Dixie, the supermarket, which turns out to have a particularly onerous application process, featuring a twenty-rninute "interview" by computer since, apparently, no human on the premises is deemed capable of representing the corporate point of view. I am conducted to a large room decorated with posters illustrating how to look "professional" (it helps to be white and, if female, permed) and warning of the slick promises that union organizers might try to tempt me with. The interview is multiple-choice: Do I have anything, such as child care problems, that might make it hard for me to get to work on time? Do I think safety on the job is the responsibility of management? Then, popping up cunningly out of the blue: How many dollars' worth of stolen goods have I purchased in the last year? Would I turn in a fellow employee if I caught him stealing? Finally, "Are you an honest person?"

Apparently I ace the interview, because I am told that all I have to do is show up in some doctor's office tomorrow for a urine test. This seems to be a fairly general rule: if you want to stack Cheerios boxes or vacuum hotel rooms in chemically fascist America, you have to be willing to squat down and pee in front of a health worker (who has no doubt had to do the same thing herself). The wages Winn-Dixie is offering -- $6 and a couple of dimes to start with -- are not enough, I decide, to compensate for this indignity.

I lunch at Wendy's, where $4.99 gets you unlimited refills at the Mexican part of the Super-bar, a comforting surfeit of refried beans and cheese sauce. A teenage employee, seeing me studying the want ads, kindly offers me an application form, which I fill out, though here, too, the pay is just $6 and change an hour. Then it's off for a round of the locally owned inns and guest houses in Key West's Old Town, which is where all the serious sightseeing and guzzling goes on, a couple of miles removed from the functional end of the island, where the discount hotels make their homes. At The Palms, let's call it, a bouncy manager actually takes me around to see the rooms and meet the current housekeepers, who, I note with satisfaction, look pretty much like me -- faded ex-hippie types in shorts with long hair pulled back in braids. Mostly, though, no one speaks to me or even looks at me except to proffer an application form. At my last stop, a palatial B & B, I wait twenty minutes to meet "Max," only to be told that there are no jobs now but there should be one soon, since "nobody lasts more than a couple weeks."

Three days go by like this and, to my chagrin, no one from the approximately twenty places at which I've applied calls me for an interview. I had been vain enough to worry about coming across as too educated for the jobs I sought, but no one even seems interested in finding out how overqualified I am. Only later will I realize that the want ads are not a reliable measure of the actual jobs available at any particular time. They are, as I should have guessed from Max's comment, the employers' insurance policy against the relentless turnover of the low-wage workforce. Most of the big hotels run ads almost continually, if only to build a supply of applicants to replace the current workers as they drift away or are fired, so finding a job is just a matter of being in the right place at the right time and flexible enough to take whatever is being offered that day. This finally happens to me at one of the big discount chain hotels where I go, as usual, for housekeeping and am sent instead to try out as a waitress at the attached "family restaurant," a dismal spot looking out on a parking garage, which is featuring "Pollish sausage and BBQ sauce" on this 95-degree day. Phillip, the dapper young West Indian who introduces himself as the manager, interviews me with about as much enthusiasm as if he were a clerk processing me for Medicare, the principal questions being what shifts I can work and when I can start. I mutter about being woefully out of practice as a waitress, but he's already on to the uniform: I'm to show up tomorrow wearing black slacks and black shoes; he'll provide the rust-colored polo shirt with "Hearthside," as we'll call the place, embroidered on it, though I might want to wear my own shirt to get to work, ha ha. At the word tomorrow, something between fear and indignation rises in my chest. I want to say, "Thank you for your time, sir, but this is just an experiment, you know, not my actual life."

Copyright © 2001 Barbara Ehrenreich

In her own words:

Between 1998 and 2000, I went to three different cities, and tried to support myself on the wages I could earn as an entry-level worker. I waited tables, I cleaned the toilets of the rich, I fed Alzheimers patients in a nursing home, I sorted stock at Wal-Mart. All these were difficult, exhausting jobs, and it made me understand what a serious mistake our nation made with welfare reform.

The theory behind welfare reform was that there was something really wrong with welfare: They were psychologically damaged —lazy, demoralized · and they are that way because of welfare, that welfare causes poverty, some people said.

Never mind that most people on welfare of course, were busy raising children and working on and off whenever they could, the new law just says everybody has to get off of welfare and into the workforce, to sink or swim. This hasn't worked out too well.

The math just doesn't work. The average woman coming off of welfare since 1996 earns $7/hour, that's $280/week before taxes, and you can't support children on that, or even one person.

I know because I tried it. And no matter how carefully I pinched pennies I couldn't get my wages to cover basic expenses..Like rent, at least $500/month plus utilities, like transportation to and from work, at least $60/month, and then if you are a working parent, you have hundreds of dollars a month in childcare expenses. Now if there's one thing that's really demoralizing, it's working hard and not making enough to live on.

Here's a simple theory of poverty: It's not a psychological condition. It is, above all — a consequence of shamefully low wages and lack of opportunity for anything else.

In one poll, 94% of Americans said that they believe, if you work, you should make enough to live on. This is a notion that is basic to American values, I'd even say it's part of our social contract. Now we have to make it a reality.

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After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music." - Aldous Huxley

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Eleanore
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posted April 07, 2006 11:07 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Eleanore     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Well, that's one thing I don't understand. If you work 40 hours a week at any job ... shouldn't you be making enough money to survive, at the very least, on your own? Who decides how much money you should be paid, and especially ... who decides which job is worth more pay than another?
When did both partners in a marriage working full-time and not making enough money to support their family become acceptable ... and when did they become lazy and stupid in the eyes of the middle and upper classes? Wasn't there a time when one working partner was enough to raise a family?
I don't think welfare would be necessary if people weren't paid such miserable wages and if healthcare wasn't so darn expensive. I'm not a socialist. I just don't understand why basic necessities have become luxuries. I think that any job you work at full time should pay you enough to put you over the poverty line and should also provide health care coverage. I think that if you and your employer are paying enormous amounts of money every month for health insurance benefits that your insurance company should actually cover your medical needs when they occur. Is that so wrong? What am I not understanding?

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"To learn is to live, to study is to grow, and growth is the measurement of life. The mind must be taught to think, the heart to feel, and the hands to labor. When these have been educated to their highest point, then is the time to offer them to the service of their fellowman, not before." - Manly P. Hall

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Eleanore
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posted November 09, 2007 06:40 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Eleanore     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Not just young workers that are hurting
Yet for each top bad occupation, most of the workers are above 20 years of age. For example, among wait staff, almost 17% are 16-to 19-years-old, 33% are between 20 and 24, and 50% are between 25 and 64, according to CEPR's Schmitt.

Lifeguards and other protective-service workers comprise the occupation category with the highest proportion of teenagers, reaching almost 48%.

"Teenagers are an important part of some of the occupations, but in no case are they the majority of workers in the occupation," Schmitt said. "In most cases, teenagers are only a fairly small share of total employment."

The 10 Worst Jobs in America


I remembered a discussion a while back where someone (I really don't remember) said that most of these low paying, low security jobs were held by teenagers when I read this article. I couldn't find that thread but I did find this one. I'm still confused about the glaring disparages between "minimum" and "living" wages ... how is that even legal and, much worse, tolerated? Add the lack of health insurance issue on top of that and, well, that's a nasty, smelly pile of garbage.

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Dervish
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posted November 09, 2007 02:35 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Dervish     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Just keep in mind that with every time the minimum wage is raised, 2 things also happen:

1. Small businesses who can't afford to meet it lay off employees, increasing poverty and need for welfare.

2. Many big businesses that CAN afford to meet it simply won't, preferring to lay off workers and not hire new ones, or to use more arcane legal tactics to effectively do the same (hire more part-time, rotate them every few months, etc, and, natch, using illegals) in order to keep those Christmas bonuses high (btw, keeping the Christmas bonus high for CEOs and the like is part of why so many get laid off during the holiday season). Even if some CEOs and the like decide to go along with it, they can technically be sued by their shareholders if the shareholders feel that it's cutting into their profits, and win. That's right, the law is not your friend if you try doing the right thing.

This leads to more layoffs, poverty, welfare burden, etc. And also keep in mind that often enough are laid off and blame is given to whoever raised the minimum wage, which leads to many embittered voters voting that person out of office...and replacing him/her with another candidate who's campaign was funded by the big biz fat cats that laid the workers off in the first place.


That said, I sympathize strongly with those working on minimum wage. That and the many other abuses they put up with, and sometimes even take for granted. I'm not exaggerating when I say I'd go into prostitution before I'd become a wage slave, as not only would I get more money with more time off to do what I really wanna do, but I'd keep more of my self-respect in the process.

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