Do you think the majority of people in the world will ever come to believe that everyone who is working full time at any job deserves to earn a living wage? Not just in the U.S., but everywhere. If so, what do you think the result would be?
By living wage, I mean enough to pay for sufficient food and shelter, reliable transportaton, a basic healthcare plan, save for retirement and enough that a two-earner family should be able to save up enough for their children’s education, if they are careful and budget fairly well.
I am guessing a serious inflationary spiral would come out of that. The luxury of the few relies on the misery of the many. To bring that huge mass up a little bit, you would have to move the top portion a huge step down, I believe.
I’ve wondered the same thing, especially in terms of all the minimum wage arguments I hear. In my mind, the minimum wage should be a function of the poverty line. According to Wikipedia , the current poverty line for a family of four is $20,000. In my mind, a family of four should have one wage earner and one family manager (ie father and mother in the traditional, 50s sense, or some balance between the 2). $20k a year comes out to $10/hr by my calculations (assuming 50 work weeks per year, 40 hrs per week), so in my mind the minimum wage should be somewhere in that ballpark. Of course IANAE, so this is just shooting from the hip here, but the idea that people are living below the poverty line in America despite working having a fulltime wage earner is pretty embarassing, IMO.
Hobo: As some of us bring up in every MW thread, the majority of workers making the federal MW are young (98% are under 25), so the idea that a job at that level should support a family of 4 is not in touch with reality-- especially since most married couples do live in dual income familes. Plus, the cost of living varies widely across the US, so mandating a national living wage based on US averages is pretty nonsensical. Small changes in the MW probably have very little effect on employment figures, but if you made the jump from $5-6 now to $10 in one fell swoop, I think you’d see major dislocations in the employment scene.
Besides, do we really want to encourage people to fstagnate in a dead end bottom-of-the-ladder job by paying them singificantly more than the market values that job at? There are lots of things the government can do to help people who are truly stuggling in poverty, but just mandating large wage increases is too blunt an instrument. Frankly, anyone who has a family of 4 and is supporting them with a MW wage job should be embarassed at himself for not taking advantage of what this country has to offer someone who simply stays in school, works reasonably hard, and has even just a little ambition.
The problem with that is that you can have a great degree of variability of what constitutes a “living wage” even with the definition you just gave. The truly poor in third world countries would risk their lives to be a poor person in the U.S. and many do. The minimum wage may not be a good guide because it affects teenagers for the most part. There aren’t many positions of any sort here in Massachusetts that only pay the minimum wage. Even McDonald’s and gas stations typically pay higher than that.
Let’s look at the things on your list:
Food - nobody is starving in this country and food is incredibly cheap. The problem is sound nutrition but that is an educational issue.
Shelter - You have got a problem if you want to live in your own apartment in Boston or Manhattan but those aren’t the only choices. There are plenty of areas in the country that have all the two bedroom apartments you could ever want for <$700 a month. If you are a low-income family, you may want to move to a low cost of living area. It isn’t like your wages can go much lower. There are outrage stories pretty regularly here in Boston about teachers and firefighters that can’t afford to live in the same wealthy suburb that they work. Exactly. Not everyone that works in Malibu, CA can buy a mansion there either. It isn’t like they can’t afford anything at all in the greater metro area. The poor can get creative as well. Maybe they can get a relative to move in and share the rent for example.
Reliable transportation - Careful shopping can get you are perfectly serviceable used vehicle for $5000 - $7000. That is under $150 a month for the car and simple liability insurance for a good driver may cost only $60 a month or so.
Basic Healthcare - This one can be a problem. One solution of getting it on your own is just to buy catastrophic medical insurance to protect against a big hit. Routine medical care can be gotten from a clinic that exists to serve that purpose and just to pay cash and maybe negotiate. Of course, no one is denied medical coverage when they most need it. Emergency rooms take everyone with no preference for their ability to pay and then sort it out later.
Retirement - the key to retirement saving for everyone is to start early and chip away at it over time. Retirement savings is self-adjusting a way way as well because poorer people don’t have an expensive lifestyle and assets to maintain.
College - This is the one time when it is SWEET to be poor. The poor have ridiculous amounts of scholarships and other financial aid available and some schools, including the Ivy’s waive all tuition for kids from households with much bigger incomes than we are talking about here (as much as 60K for full tuition waiver). I was lucky enough to have my stepfather go bankrupt right before I applied to college. I ended up going to the 3rd most expensive university in the country at the time and was offered my choice of two full (slightly different) scholarships.
In short, you can throw out any definition of “living wage” that you want to because the issues implied by the literal meaning of that phrase don’t apply to any sober, mentally well, and responsible people here. We have already achieved what much of the world would kill for in terms of the standard of living for our poor. It is also possible to pick certain cheaper parts of the country, move there, and live on little more than minimum wage with all the things that you listed if you have an ounce of common sense and a decent work ethic.
whoah. A lot of assumptions there. There is a lot of people who is really running to stand still. NBC olympic ahtlete’s biographies to the contrary, overcoming poverty is very hard for the majority of people.
I have done my share of census work, homeless shelter volunteering, GED preparation courses and after school tutoring for the poor. The reality is that there is a lot of people doing all they can to push their family ahead and still barely managing to stay afloat.
The poverty gap is widening every year and getting ahead is getting harder. The american dream is every day more of a dream.
I was speaking strictly of someone earning the MW, in response to your statment about the MW. Sure, there are people who are victims of circumstance, and there are things the government should do to help those people. But if you’re reasonably healthy, have a HS education and you’re still making only MW when you have 2 kids and a non-working spouse then you should take a serious look in the mirror.
No…I don’t believe that will ever happen. I sure HOPE it doesn’t, as it would be economic chaos.
Out of curiosity, why do people ‘deserve’ to make more than their services are actually worth to business OR society as a whole…and world wide to boot?? Or to put it another way, are you pay $15 for a Slurpee so that everyone working at 7-11 can get all those goodies you want for them?
This is somewhat deceptive, since many states have MW levels > $5.15. But to the extent that we are talking about setting US-wide standards, then it’s an accurate picture.
And it looks like I mixed up the statistic in my first post. What I should have said is that 98% of the > 25 year-old workforce makes more than the federal MW.
Ya I suppose you are right, John. If you choose to have a family its your responsibilty to come up with the means to support it.
Ok, let me revise my previous post a bit. I think that the laziest, stupidest, least motivated person in America who puts in a full years work (2000 hours) and performs that job adequately should get enough in wages to live above the poverty line. The PL for 1 person is $9,000, which comes to $4.50 an hour, well below minimum wage. I bow to the numbers. MW is working fine. I hearby retract my previous post
Are you really suggesting that everybody working at McDonald’s and Al’s Discount Lotto (or whatever) should not only be able to support a family of four comfortably, but also be able to send their kid’s to college?
Or are you just wondering if everybody will eventually think so? It sure seems we’re headed that way, what with everybody in the world “deserving” this that and the other thing. But simple economics says it ain’t so. The majority of the people on Earth are dirt poor and starving. If the few richies try to spread out the wealth and support everyone else, then everybody on Earth will be dirt poor and starving. It just isn’t feasible without massive population reduction (while maintaining present rates of production) for everybody to live the American Dream.
Yes, actually, I am suggesting that the people who work a full eight hours a day or more at fast food or retail should be able to get by on their what they earn by doing it. I’ve done those jobs, and contrary to popular ‘better than you’ type opinion, a trained chimp would not be able to do them. I did them well. I was courteous, professional and hard-working. I always tried to treat the customer the way I would like to be treated. Would I pay more for products so the producers/workers can make more? Yes. I already do that whenever possible. Whenever and wherever I can, I buy free trade certified goods, or from co-ops. I shop as carefully as I am able. It makes me sick and ashamed to buy or own anything produced by people who are being exploited. I don’t want chocolate made from coccoa picked by kidnapped child slaves. I don’t want coffee grown by farmers who have been bullied and swindled by buyers to the point that all their labor nets them barely enough not to actually starve to death. I’d rather not wear clothes sewn by imported imigrant workers shipped in from other countries and indentured in sweat shops in the Mariana Islands, where the female workers can be used as sex slaves and then forced to have abortions, all to produce clothes that say 'made in the U.S.A. I’d rather go naked, frankly, if that was my only choice.
But to answer my own original question, will the majority ever share this opinion? Hell no. Pigs will grow wings and ice rinks will open in Hades before the majority will give up power or privileges in order to benefit their fellow man.
Give up? Why is it my fault that burger flipper jobs only pay what they pay? IMO the minimum wage is TOO high, and that’s why fast food is too expensive for me to afford. So your burger flipper greed is depriving me of my rightful share of fast food. How do you sleep at night?
Whoa. I didn’t realize that Mickey Dee’s was hiring child sex slaves or what-have-you. There is a difference between ensuring basic human rights and saying it’s everyone’s god-given right to have a house, car, and college education. It’s not about power or privileges, it’s about my right to buy a cheap hamburger. It’s about the employer’s right to actually make a living. Do you really think McDonald’s or JiffyLube will be able to survive in that business when they have to pay all their employees forty grand a year? Is forty thousand a year going to be able to afford that same employee transportation and food when a hamburger costs 30 dollars and an oil change costs $200? Where in the hell do you think this money is going to come from? The U.S. is going to have to do some serious exploiting abroad to be able to raise our standard of living to that level. I say we worry about ensuring everybody’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and then start handing out cars and scholarships to the masses.
We know you are suggesting it. The question is why? And how much income would it require to “get by” as described in your OP?
Do you envision legions of people making a lifetime carreer out of being a cashier at McDonalds? Why do you want to make these mind-numbing, dead end jobs more attactive? Why do you want to give people more incentive to drop out of school or not go back to school at some point?
If they could train a chimp to do it (or make a machine that would) cheaper, then they would. This statement is simply bullshit. Do you know WHY those type jobs pay so little? You don’t seem to, so I ask you the question…why do burger flippers and such pay so little in wages?
BTW, what reality do you live in? Do you suppose that no one on the board ever worked a minimum wage job?? I certainly was born with no silver spoon in MY mouth there guru. I worked plenty of these kinds of jobs when I was a kid before going into the military (which wasn’t exactly living high on the hog either)…and when I got out of the military and went to college, I worked minimum wage type jobs after that to make enough for gas/rent money, raman noodles and instant coffee…if I were lucky.
How much more would you be willing to pay? 50% more? 100% More? Because if you wanted to pay literally every worker a wage to do all the stuff you are talking about you’d certainly be paying a LOT more for things. How about $15 for that burger? Want fries too? $10 for that. A soda? Another $5. How about we just give you an extra value meal for $30? Want to take the kids out for burgers too? Best bring a C note then…
It IS your choice. What you are talking about though is taking away MY choice to shop cheaply and save money…just because YOU feel its better to pay through the nose for goods and services so everyone can live the middle class American dream world wide. If you wish to buy expensive stuff so that the workers get a decent wage thats fine by me…there are niche stores as you pointed out that cater to you. Knock yourself out. Just don’t hold a gun to my head and make ME do it too…
