Sure, it can be done. But you can’t have a car, you can’t go out to eat, and ALL of your entertainment is going to have to be free. I did it with a bus pass, which got me to and from work, and a library card. And if you keep your eyes open, you can scrounge practically anything you need and a lot of what you want. And Goodwill is the place for clothes and such. Two dress shirts, two pair of black pants, and three ties, and you are dressed for success. You have to learn to say “No thanks - I brought mine” when everyone is going out to lunch, and figuring out free things to do on dates. (Of course, that way you know she likes you for yourself. And what free thing can you think of to do on a date? )
I shared a house with four other guys. If the bus didn’t go there, neither did I. And if it wasn’t on my budget, I didn’t buy it. If you don’t buy processed or prepared food, it is much cheaper.
I managed to save up more than my wife had when we got married, and she had been earning a hell of a lot more than me.
If you have kids or health problems, forget it. But for the average healthy adult, it can be done, at least for a while.
You can survive, but surviving ain’t living. The stress alone can make you sick. The minimum wage will have to be raised A LOT before people can actually begin to feel like they’re a part of the rest of the people around them.
You need money today so you go to a work today get paid today employment agency. Coincidently enough they pay minimum wage of $5.15 per hour. You get in line at 4:30 am cause that’s when they open and it’s first come first served. Since you don’t have money for breakfast and you’ll need lunch to be a decent worker you buy one from the labor agency for $3.00. And they will charge you $3.00 for transportation to the job site. They may or may not charge you for safety shoes and gloves.
You work all day.
If you are really, really lucky you get to work a full eight hours.
8 hours x $5.15 per hour = $41.20 subtotal - $3.00 lunch - $3.00 transportation - $0.0 Fed W/H since you put Except on the W-4 - $2.25 FICA - $0.52 Medicade + $0.0 EIC = $32.53 net pay.
Since you had to wait from 4:30 until 7:00 when the job started and you got 1/2 hour for lunch and you had to wait for the van to take you back to get your check - it is now after 4:30 pm and you can’t cash the check at a bank. (Besides, Bank of America charges non customers $5 to cash one of their checks.) So you stop at the C-store across the street that charges $1.00 plus the change to cash the check. You now have $31 in your pocket.
A room in a rooming house with common bath is $10. You’ll have to buy dinner at the C-store since there are no grocery stores downtown near the labor hall. That’s $5 for dinner since prices are higher for food in low income areas.
You now have $16 saved. Saved for work clothes, safety shoes, decent gloves. You might even splurge and buy a soda with lunch tomorrow.
**This was a painful experience, but not nearly so painful as the pain from the untreated abcess.
I would like to spare poor people such experiences, and they’re fairly commonplace among the poor. I understand that conservatives like painful experiences, and that jibes well with my understanding of the psychological underpinnings of conservatism, but the rest of us, the sane bunch, hope for a better life and a better society.
**
A society without risk, without adversity? What kind of people would that create? Adversity builds character. Do you want a whole nation of George Bushes? Pampered people with a sense of entitlement that stamp their feet when they don’t get their way?
for what it’s worth, i lived on (whatever the current minimum wage was) for the better part of ten years, most of which i spent as a single parent. i think minimum was $3.35 when i started, and when i finally managed to graduate from college, it was $5.15. i almost always worked two or three jobs, occasionally adding in odd jobs like babysitting or house cleaning. plus, i lived in a trailer that cost me $2500, and made payments on it for five years. i never had medical insurance and paid all my medical bills $10 per month until paid off. it sucked, and i felt like i’d won the lottery when i started getting my $700-every-two-weeks paychecks as an entry-level social worker.
Is the US’s minimum wage reall only $6/hr? That certinly wouldn’t be enough to survive on in the UK (particularly South-East England), where the NMW is (using Friday afternoons currency rate) $8.10/hr (workers aged 22+, going down to $6.84/hr for workers aged 18-21 or for the first 6 months of workers 22+ receiving accredited training from their employer and no NMW for 16 and 17 year olds).
How common is it for workers in the US to be paid minimum wage? As somone employed by the UK government to place people into work, I know that in the South-East where NMW is paid for a full-time job more often or not free food and/or accomadation is also provided by the employer (most full-time NMW jobs are in resturants/hotels).
no the minimum wage is actually 5.15 in the US. in some states its higher like California or Oregon where its about 6.75 but in most states its 5.15.
i dont know how many people earn min. wage, the numbers vary greatly. And from what i understand from personal experience and listening to others most min. wage jobs do not hire full time workers so they won’t have to pay benefits, they just hire alot of people for 30 hour workweeks. Consider yourself lucky to live in the UK, i think Japan is the only industrialized country with a lower inflation adjusted min. wage than the US.
MCMC: *Is the US’s minimum wage reall[y] only $6/hr? *
The federal minimum wage is actually less than that, $5.15/hr. As has been mentioned, individual states can set their own (higher) minimum wages: as of June 2003, “Since the federal minimum wage was last raised in 1997, the number of states with minimum wages above the federal level has gone from six to 13, with additional states considering action this year […] Washington state and Oregon now increase their minimum wage moderately each year to keep pace with the rising cost of living.”
*How common is it for workers in the US to be paid minimum wage? *
According to this report, minimum-wage workers make up 5.8% of the US workforce (and those earning up to a dollar above the minimum wage constitute another 8.7%). “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 average minimum-wage worker provides 54% of his or her family’s earnings, so we’re not just talking pocket money for teenagers and homemakers here. (There is actually a separate “youth subminimum” wage of $4.25/hr which can be paid to workers under 20 during their first 90 consecutive calendar days of work, which mostly applies in the teen-summer-job category.)
Are you serious? How is denying people the ability to make a survival living by working a good thing? it will not accomplish anything as far as i can see. All it will do is build resentment. Besides, surviving on $6, 7, 8/hr is adverse in and of itself, surviving on $3/hr is almost impossible in today’s inflation adjusted dolalrs.
If adversity builds character why not just get rid of everything we’ve built as a society for thousands of years.
Employers and producers would not find buyers for their products. This would result in lower prices, making it somewhat easier to survive. Politicians talk about raising minimum wages because they know it gets more votes. What would happen if minimum wage laws were repealed? Wouldn’t consumption drop off significantly? Wouldn’t surpluses force prices down making wages have relatively the same purchasing power?
Are you saying eliminating the minimum wage would lower prices, adjusting for the lack of funds min. wage workers make? i disagree with this for a variety of reasons.
just because min. wage people can’t afford something doesn’t mean it goes down in cost. health insurance is one major example of this fact. Housing is another. College is another. all 3 have prices that increase faster than inflation and the poor have trouble affording them.
Labor is only one of many costs a business must pay. cutting minimum wage would probably not make a huge difference. for example, wal-mart has 1.1 million employees and had $244.5 billion in sales in 2002.
Wal-Mart Stores had sales last year of $244.5 billion. The company has about 1.1 million employees in the United States
Assuming 900,000 of those employees make min. wage and work 35 hours a week, (900000x5.15x35x52) that is 8.4 billion annually in labor costs for min. wage employees. barely 3% of wal-marts budget goes to them, putting them at risk of starvation and homelessness would barely change wal-marts budget by 1%. and that is an exaggeration, assuming all employees work 35 hours a week or that 80% are min. wage workers. Plus that is ignoring other sources of funding wal-mart may have (tax cuts, subsidies, etc). The real number may be even lower.
the only reason consumption would drop significantly would be because there would be 10 million newly homeless people. Not really worth it.
Not sure I qualify, as I don’t make minimum wage. I am a piss poor student though, and probably only survive because of student loans and parents that are kind enough to cosign, though not loan or give any money. (probably my fault though, I am too proud to ask, and probably too proud to accept any handouts)
I have made 7 dollars an hour the last 6 months. Quite a bit above minimum wage, but I don’t work full time. I can’t, not with school and maintaining a 3.8+ GPA (which is important to get into the program I want) So I work 28-30 hours a week, and bring home about 700 dollars a month. I suppose I make less than 900, but I really don’t pay too much attention to my gross, not untill the end of the year anyhow. I do have a bit of luxary, and am lucky to have a low rent apartment with an extra bedroom I can find a roommate for. I am now going to switch to the Pharmacy at the grocery store I am working for (which was my goal), but I will be working much less hours. 74 hours a month in fact. Saturday and Sunday, 8 hour days, and every other Friday for 5 hours. This will bring me home less than 500 dollars a month, but with student loans and low living I have paid off my car, my credit cards and everything, got a roommate and my expenses are 450 dollars a month.
Oh, I have no health insurance either. I may obtain it around May of this year, so that is temporary. FWIW, my bills are listed below:
My half of the bills:
Rent - 140 (275 total)
Utilities- 50
Phone/dsl- 35
Car Insur - 52
Gas (car) - 60
Food - 60
Interest on loan- 33
Ok, only adds up to 430, but I figure the other 20 will be a movie now and again, or a bit extra for bills in the winter, summer, or as petrolium prices increase, etc. If I figure rightly, I will get a dollar an hour raise at the pharmacy and I will actually bring home about 510 dollars a month.
I don’t think having a minimum wage law makes college, health care or housing more affordable. Workers do not realize any benefits from a minimum wage. Employers simply pass this increased cost on to consumers. If minimum wages were increased to $15.00 an hour, we would end up paying $6.00 for a gallon of milk and $3.50 for a loaf of bread.
As for living on minimum wage, I have done it and it isn’t much fun. I rode a 10 speed bike everywhere, and lived with three other people in a two bedroom apartment.
I think the quality of life would be best improved by providing opportunities for training and education
j9:I think the quality of life would be best improved by providing opportunities for training and education.
I agree that that’s important, but of course there also have to be decent jobs for the trained and educated people to get. I know quite a few highly trained and educated people who are currently looking for work or scraping by on part-time, variable-hours work at low-wage jobs that are the best they can get.
*Workers do not realize any benefits from a minimum wage. *
Sure they do: they make more money. The cost of living is continually going up for everyone anyway; having a modest wage floor doesn’t accelerate that increase to the point where it eats up the benefit that the lowest-paid workers get from having that wage floor. Your assertion depends on the assumption that the wage/price relationship is perfectly elastic—i.e., that the cost of raising the wage floor is immediately and totally absorbed by increases in the prices paid by those who earn that lowest wage—which isn’t true.
im saying no we wouldnt be paying that much as min. wage labor is just one of many factors in a companies funds. if you use the wal-mart example about 3% of their budget (walmart is probably as good as an example as any, as most of their employees are min. wage or near it) is used to pay for their minimum wage employees. raising the minimum wage from 5.15 to 6.50 would cost wal mart an extra 2.2 billion a year, which is about a 0.7% budget increase. there is no way that would translate into radical increases of consumer goods. A 26% increase in the minimum wage in one of the biggest min. wage employers in the country (walmart) would cost that company an extra 0.7% a year max.
To show that this isn’t a fluke another example is Kroger, 300000 employees & $52 billion in sales.
That deal created the nation’s largest supermarket operator with more than 2,200 locations in 31 states and about 300,000 employees…Wal-Mart has surpassed Kroger as the nation’s top grocer with nearly $59 billion in grocery sales to Kroger’s $52 billion.
Assuming 250k of them are min wage workers 35hrs a week, 52 weeks a year that is 2.3 billion a year. 4.4% of Kroger’s budget is for min. wage employees.
Anyway, even though im in favor of increasing the min wage, my main reason for posting this was to see if a person could make it on min. wage. But since this topic came up i figured i’d post that min. wage employees salaries only make up about 2-5% of a large corporations budget. Things like rent, merchandise, advertising, etc. are the large budget items not min. wage labor and increasing min. wage would not lead to a 50% increase in costs unless the corporation decided to capitalize on conservative stereotypes.
Kroger is a union operation, and likely employs few, if any, minimum wage workers. Mind you, they’re not getting rich either. IIRC, from the info batted about during the last strike here, most of them fall in the $9 to $15 an hour range.
thats good news about kroger being unionized. a friend said one of her friends applied for a kroger job and it payed $10/hr, i thought it was just a fluke and assumed kroger payed min. wage. I guess im jaded due to walmarts union busting tactics into thinking that all large corporations are like that.
But my original argument is still sound, if a large corporation pays minimum wage then the chances are the labor costs are only about 3-5% of the budget and increasing the min. wage woudln’t lead to radical price increases. If a company used 4% of its budget on min wage and there is a 26% increase that is a 1% increase passed onto consumers. Not only that but whenever there is a push to increase min. wage some lawmakers push for tax cuts for corporations to offset this so the increase may be even lower than 1%.
using jacksen9’s idea of a $15 min wage would still, as far as i can tell, only lead to a 6% increase in prices at wal-mart maximum to offset labor costs.
Most should have built up that cushion while working that minimum wage job, and still living with their parents before they moved out.
Same as above.
The OP did mention if one had good health. I can certainly understand if one has a major health problems, and my sympathies certainly rest with them. But having a tooth pulled isn’t a crisis situation; nor is it all that expensive for quite a few dentists if you checked around before settling on one. And it’s not that difficult to get make up time in for taking the time off for that doctor’s visit assuming one had been any decent employee at all. Been there. Others don’t show up or quit all the time on minimum wage jobs, and there is ample opportunity to make up for the time you had to miss. This wouldn’t be a problem for one that planned ahead and had their little nest egg. I think health insurance is often overrated, anyhow. Besides, by paying cash, my doctor’s visits are anywhere from 30-50% less. Some other board for that.
One doesn’t have to resort to being living on handouts, or doing something illegal. Hell, one really doesn’t even need a minimum wage job or even have a job to survive. Martin Sheen hosted a PBS show that did a story on some families that moved to Alaska and lived basically off of the land. They seemed to live quite comfortably, and many of them had modern conveniences including electricity by using generators. They had plenty of meat by shooting elk, and I think some had their own small gardens. Alaska also pays a couple of thousand dollars a year for each citizen for just living there which they get from their oil revenues. Of course, I understand if people don’t want to do something as drastic as this. But there are also other families that have left bigger cities, and have chosen to live in the Appalachian area in the South or other areas where land and other things are more affordable. Most don’t even bother with any full-time minimum wage jobs, but just take on odd jobs occasionally. They prefer it that way. Mother Earth News features families all the time that do this. As long as you don’t have some serious mental illness or drug problems, if you have reasonably good health, there is no reason for one not to survive in most areas. Maybe the bigger cities in America such as NYC where housing and other things are sky high it would be difficult to survive off of minimum wage. But living in smaller towns should be affordable enough. Often housing is ridiculously cheap. They won’t feature you on “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous”, but one should be able to do just fine if they put a little thought into it.
My first two years in grad school were spent making minimum wage. It was rough but I survived. I didn’t have a car for much of the time. Sometimes I commuted ten miles on my bike. Other days I splurged and took the train. I never went to the movies and only rarely rented movies. Entertainment consisted of sleep, library books, and net surfing (which is free for me). My only luxury was getting take-out on Friday nights. Many of my meals consisted of just one thing, like sphagetti noodles or white rice.
I was happy but there was no way I could have advanced financially living like that. I couldn’t save squat and every major purchase (like plane tickets during the holidays or student fees) was accompanied by much worry. My friends constantly laughed at my abject poverty (I would eat saltine crackers for lunch and my clothes were cheap, second-hand things) and I never felt like I could go anywhere or do anything “cool”. I didn’t have insurance, so I always feel like I was living dangerously on the edge. I know my parents were worried for me, especially since I was riding my bike all over town.
I live in a low-income apartment (you can’t make more than a certain amount to live here), but even then I needed a huge deposit to get the place. If it wasn’t for the CD I cashed after graduating from college, I would have had to depend on my parents. And without them, I don’t know what I would have done.
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