The role of the working poor in our society

Great Debates
1

In the massive pit thread I’ve seen arguments to the effect that poor people deserve their fate if they can’t afford healthcare. They should have gotten a better job; they should have saved up more money, etc.

Here’s my argument: In our society, there are certain low paying jobs that need to be done that we all rely and benefit from. You know the old saying, “the world needs ditch diggers too”? Well it’s the truth. And convenience store clerks, berry pickers, etc. Jobs that at the moment don’t offer their employees any health benefits (because they can get away with it).

If everybody took Curlcoat and Rand Rover’s advice, our society couldn’t function. We need people to do shit jobs. It’s wrong that we benefit from their labor, yet refuse to give them a living wage for what they do.

2

Regardless of their arguments, these jobs are probably not below “living wage” jobs. You can live on them and afford decent insurance, although the quality is not nice. You can certainly live on minimum wage. You just don’t live very well and may have to avoid fun thigns you wanted to do. If you don’t, or spend your money poorly, well… I don’t see why it suddenly becomes my problem.

Of course, all living wage arguments I’ve ever seen involved the well-off trying to tell others how to spend their own money, and missing to the point of economic returns so badly that their efforts probably made things worse. Although that’s not the thrust of your arugment and not why or how I was crticizing it.

3

Minimum Wage = $7.25
Standard Work Year = 2000 hours
Minimum Annual Income = $14,500
Federal Poverty Guidelines for 1 and 2 person household (including employee)
$10,830 ; $14,570

how exactly are you supposed to live off of that and afford decent insurance? unless by “quality is not nice” you meant “quality is that of abject poverty” ?

4

Low cost insurance comes with high deductibles, which is exactly what someone in this situation can’t afford. How much of this budget is supposedly spent on “fun?” - unless you count eating as fun.

5

pfft. let them eat stale bread and water. sugar is a luxury.

6

I’d read the first part of that thread when it started, but I’m unwilling to read 40 pages, so I apologize if some of this is covered.

I absolutely agree that we need ditch diggers and burger flippers and janitors and whatever other low paying jobs, the problem is if you start paying them too much more than they’re worth on an open market, you start distorting the market and removing incentive to do other jobs.

That is, if I’m satisfied enough with my living conditions that the additional salary or benefits that would normally be an incentive to get needed skills isn’t there, then you’ll start seeing too many people doing the jobs that they’re getting over-compensated for, so to counteract that, the other jobs have to get paid more to increase that incentive, and all you’ve really done is increase inflation.

But it works the other way too, if we had no minimum wage and someone was trying to hire a ditch digger paying $1 an hour; no one is going to bite because the job is simply worth more than that. And if there continues to be too little incentive, the wage will keep increasing until someone who might have previously considered getting additional training or skills to go to another job no longer has sufficient incentive to do so, and becomes a ditch digger.

So, in my opinion, the whole concept of a living wage is, at best, a temporary phenomenon. If you raise the minimum wage, those people earn a living wage briefly until the economy readjusts, and then they’re making below the living wage again, and the only difference is that all the numbers are higher. An economy depends on the underachievers who are willing to work for lower wages just as much as it depends on the skilled laborers. If you continue to pay them more than they’re worth, you will actually continue to actually have reduced incentive for people to get additional job skills and you will expedite the devaluation of currency.

Yes, I’d love to see everyone own their own home, have health care, and all the other wonderful conveniences of the modern world, but I just don’t see how, given the above context, how that can be done without also affecting everyone else. In an ideal society, these crappy jobs would be reserved for the deliberate underachievers (like high school dropouts) or people who are “working their way up” so that they are only ditch diggers when they’re young and quickly get sufficient skills and experience to work up into bigger and better things.

So, really, I don’t see what’s wrong with us benefitting from their work. Sure, we benefit from it, but we benefit from the work that everyone puts into society in some way or another. They’ve made choices that have led them there and, most importantly, they’ve agreed to be compensated for that amount for doing that job.
And more specifically, what is a living wage? I’ve known people that made minimum wage, or darn close to it, and they manage to make it by. Generally, they’re rooming with a couple other people, sometimes working a couple jobs, like bagging groceries full-time and McDonald’s part time. Sure, they generally do without a lot of conveniencies, and many of them couldn’t even afford cars, but they were always able to make ends meet.

But why do we have to account for health insurance, and if we do, what exactly qualifies as “decent” insurance? There seems to be an underlying assumption that health insurance is some sort of right akin to free speech, and it just isn’t. Some people have good health insurance and see a doctor whenever anything is even slightly off, but is that really what makes “decent” insurance? The answer to why people aren’t able to afford needed medicine isn’t necessarily trying to find a way to provide them with affordable healthcare, the problem is that healthcare itself is just too damn expensive. The problem is, like with the whole living wage concept, is that we’re expected to pay more than the medicine is worth. So the answer isn’t paying everyone else more so they can then pay for the medicine, it’s to figure out why it’s costs so much and fix it. Some of that has to do with stupid malpractice suits, drug liability, some of it is simple greed, or social expectations.

7

This proves my point. You have no idea how to spend a dollar if you think one person can’t live on $10,000 a year. I assure you it’s perfectly possible. The fact that the feds stick their poverty line high does not mean you can’t. Nor did I say people wouldn’t be poor. But poor != starving or desperate.

But judging by your other post, you have no intellectual content to share, so I’ll be ignoring your posts unless you actually have a point from now on.

8

Well it’s like the joke goes. (My interpretation anyway)

What happened when Atlas Shrugged?

He made a sandwich just before he set out to clean his fourteen toilets for the first time.

9

You’re going to argue that the poverty line is too high? Wow. Here’s a link to a living wage calculator:

http://www.livingwage.geog.psu.edu/places/5303363000

Plug in your city. Obviously, how much you need is determined by where you live (housing costs vary greatly and all). It breaks it down by category (explained in the “About” link) what exactly the bare minimum is. Wanna take a stab at showing us all where the $8,000+ gap can be made up for a single adult?

10

This is pretty self-evidently not the case. There are currently people working at jobs that do not offer health insurance. And our society functions.

The first part is quite true. The second part is not.

As Blaster Master points out, if there were no minimum wage legislation in place, and you offered someone a job digging ditches for a nickel an hour, there wouldn’t be any takers. Because a nickel is not enough to persuade people to give up an hour doing whatever to dig ditches.

People work when the offered wage is enough to compensate them for working instead of doing anything.

One thing all the non-benefit-paying shit jobs have in common is low entry costs. Mostly anyone can put on a paper hat and learn the phrase “you want fries with that?” as opposed to, say, graduating medical school. Therefore, on average, doctors make more than the woman working the drive-thru window at McD’s. That’s neither fair nor unfair, it’s just a fact of life.

Regards,
Shodan

11

Somehow illegal immigrants are able to come in, be payed something like half of minimum wage, remain over a healthy weight, not sleep on the street…

All these people who can’t live on a “living wage” can’t do that because they’re housing themselves in a larger space than they need–because anything less is “too small”–living closer to town than they can afford–because “no one” can walk two hours to and back from work every day–etc. They’re trying to live above their means. If they didn’t try to do that, they’d have health insurance.

Yes, they’d have to live in the same room as their baby; yes, they’d have to live without a microwave or a TV; yes, they’d have to spend twice as long getting to work and actually (gasp) walk some of the way; And yes, it would suck on a day-to-day basis. But, in return, they would have the money they needed for an emergency. Or they would have the money they needed to one day open a shop of their own, or go back to school, etc. But of course, if they were that forethinking, they probably wouldn’t have ended up at the bottom of the heap in the first place.

The problem, really, isn’t that poor people can’t live within their means. It’s that they’re the sort of person who becomes a poor person, and they’ll just never be able to live within their means regardless of how much money you give them.

Now does this mean that they deserve to die if they get ill? No, probably not. It’s not really their fault what their maximum capabilities are, and we certainly do need ditch diggers. But at the same time, if I’m bright, hard working, and do plan ahead in my life, accomplish things far beyond what anyone else starting from the same exact starting could ever have accomplished, I’m going to feel like I earned to get rewarded for that.

Hell, people can’t even play MMOs without having to come up with ways to make “fair” systems of parceling out virtual goodies, and I played on European servers where 80% of them all are living in socialistic, Scandinavian countries. And “fair” always equates to the people who went above and beyond the minimum requirements get more, and the people who you could really live without if they weren’t the only person you could find to fit the slot–well they get less.

So at the same time as poor people don’t deserve to die, it’s hard argument to make in light of practical human interaction that anyone’s going to feel like it’s “fair” that the people who accomplish more in life don’t get better quality service when they have an emergency.

12

Okay - I plugged in my town. Here’s what it gives me for my family of four:

Food - $756 - You’d have to be an idiot to spend that much! We spend about $350 per month for all of us, and that includes fresh vegetables and good meat. However, we do not eat out very often, say once a month or two, and I know a lot of people who make poor decisions about dining out.

Child Care - $1,104. I have one child in day care at $125/wk, so extending that out for two kids - $1000.

Medical - $372. Our combined HSA and insurance runs us about $450, but that’s not a normal plan, but we decided on that gives us the most flexibility and useability for our family.

Housing - $745. Our mortgage payment is about $790, but that is for a big old Victorian house with 3 beds and 3 baths. Average rent for a two bedroom is about $600, which I will use since it seems more appropriate for a low wage earner.

Transportation - $958. The mind boggles as to how they came up with that number. We both drive cars that are now paid off, but when they weren’t we had a combined payment of about $430. We drive little sedans, so we spend about $20 to fill the tank, three times a month. Figure in an oil change (which we do ourselves at home every three months for $18), that’s an additional $6 per month. So, with the car payments, say $556 per month. Plus, our town is small and everything is walkable.

Other - $786. Okay, since they go into no further detail, I will say we spend $786 per month on “Other”

So the grand total we have in real life is $3392 per month. This calculator has $4721 in monthly expenses. That’s $1329 extra that’s padded in there, which seems way outside any acceptable margin of error.

It seems that I found an annual savings of $15,948 in my local budget.

13

Your link is outright deceptive, and was either made by people who, again, don’t know the value of a dollar, or were simply lying. After testing several times, I noted that they simply used higher-than-neccessary values that - you guessed it - involve buying more and more expensive living space than you can afford, having a food budget more than you need, and so forth. On every item. In other words, it was outright useless and false.

It claims you need 500+ to live in Knoxville city limits. This is grossly ill-informed at best and absurd at worst. I know several people who live in much less expensive apartments for a fact after utilites. They don’t get exactly the conditions they would love, but it keeps a roof over their heads and there’s working power, water, it’s as clean as they make it, space for them, and enough left over for some decent entertainment, too. They don’t buy bus tickets, but they could.

Even with all of this, they still live only three miles from (our very small) downtown, and would save 200 a month over what you link claims. So, anybody want to try again? Maybe if you keep sending me lies, you’ll find one I can’t find the naked flaw in! Then you win, right? :rolleyes:

14

“The problem, really, isn’t that poor people can’t live within their means. It’s that they’re the sort of person who becomes a poor person, and they’ll just never be able to live within their means regardless of how much money you give them.” Sage Rat says.

Oh please, we are back to arguing that the poor are poor due to inherent character flaws? Thought that little theory went out with debtors’ prisons and the hanging of children. :rolleyes:

I’ve lived on min. wage before, and it’s a struggle just to keep housed and fed, much less say anything above and beyond that. FTR, I worked over a decade as a preschool teacher (yes, by choice…I took my first degree in Child Development, loved the work, and I would argue that it IS a highly skilled job/profession that nonetheless pays crap)

I’m currently fairly “poor”, in that I am returning to college in the fall and unemployed due to both the economy and my upcoming schedule, which will preclude ft employment.

As a widow with 2 kids, I know a little something about stretching a dollar (something most “poor” people know…this superior nonsence about irresponsible spending and an inability to handle money well is often spouted by those who’ve never had to go a day without their $4 latte in their lives…I challenge any one of them to set themselves the task of living for just 1 month on min. wage, THEN they can talk to me about money skills. :dubious: Fact is, most who DO live on such an income could teach them a thing or two about frugality and creativity)

Such utter B.S.

ITA that the root of the health care issue is that medical costs are out of control. One reason is that the insured and pay-out-of-pocket customers are picking up the tab for the uninsured…we are ALREADY paying for subsidized health care, just through higher costs, not taxes). Another cause is the over-reliance on drugs and elaborate diagnostics as opposed to a focus on prevention and lifestyle changes (the largest burden on our system currently is chronic illness, much of it linked to diet, lack of exercise, and other lifestyle factors).

I have NEVER had health insurance in my life. Even when I had jobs which offered it, the cost was high enough that I had to decline…it was literally a choice of making ends meet or not. I have paid out of pocket or taken advantage of state programs for my children (no adult coverage with those).

We NEED basic health care access for every American, imo. A government subsidized program must be an option for those who cannot get or afford care elsewhere. Those who can are free to maintain their private coverage, and if the private companies are as superior in cost and service as they claim, they have nothing to worry about from a government option.

15

Nice to know that you’re the arbiter of “how to spend a dollar” or of its value.

You remind me of the archetypal (out of touch) granny who thinks giving her grandchildren 5 bucks on their birthday is spoiling them.

16

If you are claiming “it is impossible to live on $X a month,” you only need one counterexample to be proven wrong. It is not a matter of opinion.

17

No, I disagree. I lived on $12,000 when it was just me and my daughter. We had a cheap apartment, a lousy car, and I never (never, ever) got perks like new clothes or a $5 latte.

But it wasn’t that bad. Not only was it not that big a deal, it was very satisfying to know that I was doing it on my own. I worked my way up, did well enough to be solidly middle class now, and am working on moving up even higher.

They still tease me at work about this one: I was making a grocery list, and I was very poor, I had to budget closely. One entry was “Meat $4” They thought it was oh, so precious, that I had $4 to spend on meat. Some of them couldn’t believe it was even possible.

It was - $4 can buy ground beef and some chicken breasts, which was more than enough for me and my toddler. Those lessons still serve me well financially.

18

Yes, you lived a life of abject poverty. I’m not refuting this - in fact it’s my entire point. However, part of the point is that there are some people for whom advancement and improvement is not a possibility. These people should not be relegated to a life of never ever having any perks in their life whatsoever. These people should not be relegated to a life where one unexpected expense throws their preciously balanced (budget) into a deep color of red. These people should not be relegated to a life where they will not be able to accumulate any assets whatsoever.

19

As to the role of working poor in our society, they are the very backbone of our society and economy. A look at the income figures of Americans reveals that the vast majority are “working poor”, in that they earn less than the definition of “middle class”, and that progressivly smaller segments earn the higher amounts.

Essentially, the accumulation of profit dictates that most must be paid less than their work is actually worth…the current US economy is a pyramid scheme, with the masses making up the base and middle and a tiny few occupying the apex.

Think about it: it is not possible for everyone, or even a majority, to earn the higher incomes…our system relies upon a majority earning lower incomes. Even if every single adult had an advanced degree and/or highly specialized skills, there are simply not enough positions in those areas. Not to mention that yes, we DO need people to pick our food and work in grocery stores and eateries etc.

While many Americans prefer to think of themselves as “middle class” or even “upper class”, the reality is that it is increasingly the case that one is either “working poor” or “rich”. The income divide is expanding at alarming rates in most “wealthy” nations.

Fact is, if you don’t have substantial savings/capital/investments, enough to survive a serious health crisis, long period of unemployment, etc…if you must work for a living to maintain your standard of living (keep your house, pay your bills, eat) you ARE “working poor”, for all intents and purposes, and just a few steps away from being flat-out “poor”. (homeless, bankrupt, on the dole)

Don’t kid yourself.

Now, I DO think there IS a “poor” mentality…some are inculcated with it from birth and involved in generational poverty strongly linked to lack of work ethic, lack of drive/motivation, negative mental and behavior patterns.

But that does not mean that everyone who is, based on income, “poor”, suffers from this syndrome. Most do not. Most “poor” are hard working, motivated, and dream of a better future for themselves and their children.

Some, like me, have made choices that limited their economic potential (and I do not regret those choices…I chose the work I did with children out of love, but let’s face it, I would be sitting a lot prettier today had I not worked ten yrs for those wages…I doubt I’d be happier, but I’d definately have more assets!):stuck_out_tongue:

I have never considered myself “poor”, but I have certainly been low on cash quite a lot. Just saying, it is faulty to judge someone’s character or intelligence based on their income…you have no idea why they are “poor”.

20

I did it for several years.

Not really. Less than 3% of the US labor force works for minimum wage, and more than half of those who do are not supporting a family. I don’t think I can learn much from a teenager working for beer money.

IOW, shifting the cost to the taxpayer will not address the issue in the slightest.

I don’t understand. You say the above, and then go on to say -

If health care coverage saves money, why didn’t you buy the insurance and save money?

I am afraid this also doesn’t make a lot of sense. You seem to be saying that the vast majority of Americans make less than the middle class. Do you have a cite for this?
Regards,
Shodan