# The role of the working poor in our society **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 31, 2009, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-the-working-poor-in-our-society/504904 "2009-07-31T19:26:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![uglybeech](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/82dd89/32.png) [@uglybeech](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/uglybeech)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2009, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-the-working-poor-in-our-society/504904/41 "2009-08-01T00:10:11Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > So, is your concept of democracy is for us smart people to go around and force the stupid and poor to spend their money wisely? Frankly, that’s a lot easier and more moral than taking my money to pay for their mistakes. Why revolutions get so bloody. ---
**Author:** ![Blalron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/35a633/32.png) [@Blalron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blalron)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2009, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-the-working-poor-in-our-society/504904/42 "2009-08-01T00:11:49Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > The problem I have with trying to make minimum wage existence more comfortable is that there’s a big damn moral hazard that comes with it. Life at the bottom end of the income scale should be uncomfortable - that’s what gives people the motivation to get out of it. Getting divorced should be financially painful - or you get too many easy divorces. Paying for child care should be a bit painful, or you get too many people shuffling their kids into child care who could otherwise not do so. The stress of being poor can actually [harm](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/05/AR2009040501719.html) a child’s cognitive development. Children from poor families are [more likely](http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE5064ZV20090107) to be depressed, which makes it harder to climb out of poverty. I think there’s a pervasive attitude among many that being poor is a moral failure on the part of the impoverished. I strongly dispute that conclusion. Being poor grinds you down, making it harder to pull yourself up by your bootstraps (assuming you can even afford to buy boots). ---
**Author:** ![treis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bc79bd/32.png) [@treis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/treis)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2009, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-the-working-poor-in-our-society/504904/43 "2009-08-01T00:34:52Z")
Shodan and Sam, when did you guys live off of minimum wage? ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2009, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-the-working-poor-in-our-society/504904/44 "2009-08-01T00:34:53Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > 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. You are incorrect here – and I speak from my own experience (in general friends and acquaintances, though for a period my wife and I). It is quite possible to hold a position, even a quasi-full-time one, which does not pay enough to support a family adequately or which provides little or no margin beyond the payment of esssentials (rent, utilities, food). It is also possible to be in a position where one cannot find employment adequate to support oneself, despite extensive effort. And you are no doubt right that it is not, strictly, your problem. But of course, none of the social benefits that you take for granted are technically our problems, either. It’s a case of whose ox is gored. Personally, I stand with John Donne: “No man is an island…” ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2009, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-the-working-poor-in-our-society/504904/45 "2009-08-01T00:37:35Z")
Have you been poor? I’ve been poor. Most of my friends come from the same background. I have other friends who grew up middle class or rich. The biggest factor in determining if a child is depressed or has poor cognitive development is not poverty, it’s the behavior of the parents. Fifty years ago, just about everyone grew up in conditions that we would consider to be poverty today. The middle class dream was a 1000 square foot home with a white picket fence. Two bedrooms for a family with four children. One TV and one car. If you went slightly upscale you might find homes with a washer and dryer, and maybe an extra half-bath. I don’t think the youth of that time were psychologically scarred. If poverty is causing problems today, it’s because today’s poverty brings with it a lot of problems of the social underclass - poor parenting in particular. Too many single mothers, too many unparented children causing problems for other children. The people who lived in Levittown in the 1950’s didn’t live any better than people who live in poverty today - save that they generally had two parents who cared about them and who made sure they were raised right. Fixing this problem isn’t a matter of money. In fact, the ‘conservative’ argument is that the problem we have today is a sociological problem of people who never grow up and take responsibility for themselves, and therefore don’t take responsibility for their children either. When you cast the safety net too wide, and take away the consequences of poor decisions, you remove the essence of adulthood - the notion that once you leave home, you are responsible for your own decisions and the consequences thereof. Adulthood doesn’t come to many people living in poverty any more. People just change their guardianship from the parent to the government. Then they have their own children, and expect the government to raise them. A wide safety net infantilizes the population. This does not apply to everyone in poverty of course, or even to the majority. Most people in poverty do not stay there. But the problem of the permanent underclass needs to be solved, and you can’t solve it by throwing money at them. If anything, it makes the problem worse. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2009, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-the-working-poor-in-our-society/504904/46 "2009-08-01T00:49:02Z")
> [@treis](#): > > Shodan and Sam, when did you guys live off of minimum wage? You mean during what time period? For me, it was up to about 1990. From about 1985 on I made more than minimum wage, but averaged less than minimum wage because I only worked part time while I was in school. I don’t see that things have changed much. ---
**Author:** ![Blalron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/35a633/32.png) [@Blalron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blalron)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2009, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-the-working-poor-in-our-society/504904/47 "2009-08-01T00:53:38Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Fixing this problem isn’t a matter of money. In fact, the ‘conservative’ argument is that the problem we have today is a sociological problem of people who never grow up and take responsibility for themselves, and therefore don’t take responsibility for their children either. When you cast the safety net too wide, and take away the consequences of poor decisions, you remove the essence of adulthood - the notion that once you leave home, you are responsible for your own decisions and the consequences thereof. Adulthood doesn’t come to many people living in poverty any more. People just change their guardianship from the parent to the government. Then they have their own children, and expect the government to raise them. A wide safety net infantilizes the population. I don’t think that providing people with a bare subsistance is going to infantilize them or reduce their incentive to work. Do you honestly think that if the government offered everyone who wanted it a crappy 100 square foot apartment (enough room for a bedroom, toilet, and a hotplate) and really cheap food (rice, beans, potatoes) that they are all just going to sit on their duff all day in the 10 by 10 room, eating their rice gruel and being content? Most humans aren’t built that way. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/73ab20/32.png) [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tao_s_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2009, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-the-working-poor-in-our-society/504904/48 "2009-08-01T01:01:16Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > You know, from my recollection of the conservatives and libertarians on this board, far more of them come from poor backgrounds than you would think. So you might want to be a little careful in tossing around accusations. As have I. I have a huge gash scare on my foot that didn’t heal right because my mom at the time didn’t think she could afford to take me to the hospital to have it stitched up. I also have memories of running out of food, having the electric shut off in the middle of winter (which disabled the heater), getting picked on for it, etc. > [@](#): > > We did just fine. We lived in a crappy little apartment, and had an old black-and-white TV with an analog tuner you had to stick a penny into to keep it tuned to a channel. My brother and I shared a room. We ate a lot of Kraft Dinner and leftovers. Our clothes were hand-me-downs. I didn’t have a bicycle until I eventually found one for $5 at a yard sale, and that eventually got stolen. But at no time were we starving, or even unhappy. We played board games, we watched that crappy old TV, and we learned to amuse ourselves inexpensively. I spent a lot of time at the public library. Did you grow up in Canada? Did your mother make use of any social programs? Was the minimum wage there? Was it higher (in inflation adjusted money) then it is here now? > [@](#): > > As soon as we were old enough, we got jobs to help out. For me, it was first delivering papers, then doing yard work, then finally a ‘real’ job in a grocery store as a stockboy. As did I. I detasseled, raked leaves, got a job as grocery bagger, etc. > [@](#): > > I paid my way through college by working summers and part time during the semester. I lived in a basement suite with another student. I survived those years on about $8,000 per year. What year was this? I can tell you my mom tried support a family on that in the 90s. Michigan minimum wage used to be very low. It didn’t work so well. Did your friend contribute $8,000 as well? If so then your statement is incredibly misleading because your household income was $16,000. > [@](#): > > The problem I have with trying to make minimum wage existence more comfortable is that there’s a big damn moral hazard that comes with it. Life at the bottom end of the income scale should be uncomfortable - that’s what gives people the motivation to get out of it. So who sweeps the streets in your society of Rands? Do you think minimum wage jobs don’t need done? You seem to think their shouldn’t be people wanting to do them. That they should be punish for fulfilling roles necessary to society. If the jobs need done, other then being selfish greedy asshole, or a sadist, why would you want people to be punished for doing them? You think if people have the basic necessities, including health care, they’ll just stop caring? If you do then how come doesn’t everyone stop at lower middle class? > [@](#): > > Getting divorced should be financially painful - or you get too many easy divorces. This kind of dark ages style judgmentalism is the biggest flaw in Conservatism. It’s about hurting everyone who doesn’t live up to the 1950s office worker family ideal just for being unfortunate or different. If the marriage isn’t going to work then you want to punish the spouses for it? You’d rather someone stayed unhappily married over fear of bankruptcy? > [@](#): > > Paying for child care should be a bit painful, or you get too many people shuffling their kids into child care who could otherwise not do so. Yea those evil parents, abusing the system by not leaving their kids home alone. > [@](#): > > That’s not to say we shouldn’t help people at the bottom of the ladder. We should. It’s hard to believe, considering you want to make parents, and by extension, their kids suffer just so they won’t use a baby sitter as much. > [@](#): > > But we should help them help themselves. We should provide them with job training, with life skills, with access to computers and public business centers with printers and fax machines so they can improve their desirability to potential employers. We should provide them with moving assistance should jobs in their region dry up. We should not give them a handout, we should give them a leg up. We don’t need to give them money to use to buy new TV’s and cigarettes. This I actually agree with. The only difference is I include healthcare in that safety net. Do you think it’s right people sometimes have to choose between vital medicine or rent? Between bankruptcy or death? That they’re stuck at a job they hate, but can’t move on lest their health problem become a pre-existing condition? People need the basics, including basic food, shelter, water, safety, and healthcare. Anyone who settled for just the basics wouldn’t amount to much anyway. > [@](#): > > And by the way, the world average income is just over $8000. In terms of purchasing power, the U.S. poverty line is only $9,000 less than the median income in Britain. Even the poor in the U.S. are wealthy by world standards. Yet which country has the more better off population? It sure isn’t the US, if you go by happiness, infant mortality, or life expectancy. Also using money as a measure like that ignores cost of living expenses (a dollar goes a lot farther in Mexico, then Manhatten). How much does the average Brit have to spend on healthcare expenses verses the average American? I can guarantee you it’s quite a bit less for the Brits even if you include taxes collected. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/73ab20/32.png) [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tao_s_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2009, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-the-working-poor-in-our-society/504904/49 "2009-08-01T01:06:49Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > compare the U.S.'s average standard of living to those other countries. For example the US to Sweden. ---
**Author:** ![athelas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5e9695/32.png) [@athelas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/athelas)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2009, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-the-working-poor-in-our-society/504904/50 "2009-08-01T01:13:36Z")
Yeah, just what has [Sweden](http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0803/international-invest-guide-obama-sweden-public-downsizing.html) been doing lately? > [@](#): > > Anders Borg has a message for those who look to government to take over health care, rescue the financial system and run troubled corporations: I have seen the future–and it doesn’t work. > > As the finance minister of Sweden, Borg is the chief financial officer of a country long known as a walking billboard for a social welfare state. In Borg’s view, the 1970s and 1980s were lost decades for Sweden. Left-leaning politicians pushed government spending, excluding investment outlays, from 22% of gross domestic product in 1970 to 30% in 1980. Real growth fell from an average of 4.4% annually in the 1960s to 2.4% in the 1970s and remained low for the next two decades. > > “Like many societies, we went too far in our welfare-state ambitions,” say Borg…“If you’re working yourselves upwards in taxes and deficits, we’re working ourselves downwards,” says Borg. > > Since sweeping to power in 2006, Reinfeldt’s center-right Alliance has been shrinking Sweden’s welfare state. The government is resisting calls to rescue its struggling auto industry. To hear Borg tell it, his government isn’t inspired by coldhearted Darwinism but by cold, hard evidence that the easier the state makes life for people, the easier they take it. > > Sweden has long had among the most lavish unemployment benefits in the OECD, and when Borg’s Alliance came to power one-quarter of Swedes were subsisting on the government dole through unemployment or sickness benefits. That figure is now down to 20%. As part of its makeover, the government tightened sickness and unemployment benefits to strip Swedes of some of the world’s highest sickness absentee rates (40.2 days yearly when Borg’s government came into power, 34.6 days now). > > Borg’s prescription for growth is simple: cut taxes. His government has slashed the tax rate on low incomes from 30.7% to 17.1%. The combined tax take (national and local; income and other) has fallen by 2.5 percentage points in three years to 46.6% of gross domestic product. Sweden is also notably [corporation-friendly](http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2006/10/how_has_the_swe.html), a key to their…non-complete failure that leftist types do not often acknowledge. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/73ab20/32.png) [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tao_s_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2009, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-the-working-poor-in-our-society/504904/51 "2009-08-01T01:33:12Z")
> [@athelas](#): > > Yeah, just what has [Sweden](http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0803/international-invest-guide-obama-sweden-public-downsizing.html) been doing lately? from this link: > [@](#): > > Borg says it’s quite possible to combine “a flexible, market-oriented system with the traditional values of Sweden.” By “traditional” he means valuing social cohesion, a publicly financed safety net of some sort and gender equality. Parity between the sexes is a tenet of the Social Democratic swing of the 1980s and, Borg says, of the Viking era. Then… > [@athelas](#): > > YSweden is also notably [corporation-friendly](http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2006/10/how_has_the_swe.html), a key to their…non-complete failure that leftist types do not often acknowledge. From this link: > [@](#): > > Second, the Scandinavian economies have become much more globalized. The old story was that globalization rendered welfare state expenditures unsupportable; it is more likely that the opposite is true, at least provided trade is open, credibility is high, and business regulation is light. So your cites support social safety nets then? ---
**Author:** ![athelas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5e9695/32.png) [@athelas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/athelas)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2009, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-the-working-poor-in-our-society/504904/52 "2009-08-01T01:37:54Z")
No, it says that they can be _propped up_ if you are even more more economically liberal than the United States is. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2009, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-the-working-poor-in-our-society/504904/53 "2009-08-01T01:50:03Z")
> [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](#): > > Did you grow up in Canada? Did your mother make use of any social programs? Was the minimum wage there? Was it higher (in inflation adjusted money) then it is here now? My family was the only non-welfare family I knew of in the housing complex we lived in. My mother grew up with the notion that you don’t accept charity unless you have absolutely no choice, so our standard of living was actually lower than most of the other families. However, we were one of the few families to actually make it out of that situation. Because my mother actually developed job skills, she worked her way up in the small grocery store she worked in, eventually becoming manager. And we eventually managed to buy half of a small duplex and move out of there, and with my mother’s home equity she eventually bought a little store of her own. That was after I left home. This would never have happened had she taken the welfare that was available to her, because she would never have developed those job skills. > [@](#): > > Did your friend contribute $8,000 as well? If so then your statement is incredibly misleading because your household income was $16,000. I have no idea how much money he had. He paid his half of the rent and utilities, and sometimes we shared food and sometimes we didn’t. And I said nothing about household income - I simply pointed out that one option poor people have is to share expenses with others. > [@](#): > > So who sweeps the streets in your society of Rands? Do you think minimum wage jobs don’t need done? You seem to think their shouldn’t be people wanting to do them. That they should be punish for fulfilling roles necessary to society. I think if society needs street sweepers, it will have to pay whatever the workers who are willing to do it demand to be paid. If they don’t, they won’t get the streets swept. For example, around here we once used to have full-service gas stations. We no longer do, because no one is willing to work as a pump jockey for the kind of wages that can reasonably be paid for that job. If society valued that job more, we would be willing to pay more for our gas, and those people would make enough money. However, a lot of those low paying jobs are not held by primary wage earners, but by secondary wage earners, college students, children, etc. One of the effects of high minimum wage laws is to eliminate the ability of such people to find work. And that’s a damned shame. Luckily we exempt jobs like paper carrier from minimum wage laws, because if we didn’t, a lot of kids would no longer get valuable work experience. But I suppose you want those jobs to pay $7.25 per hour as well? > [@](#): > > If the jobs need done, other then being selfish greedy asshole, or a sadist, why would you want people to be punished for doing them? What a twisted world you live in, where a person who accepts a job offer is beinig ‘punished’ because he’s not making as much as YOU think he should earn. > [@](#): > > You think if people have the basic necessities, including health care, they’ll just stop caring? If you do then how come doesn’t everyone stop at lower middle class? I think that any time you make it easier to live a lifestyle, some people on the margin will choose to remain in that lifestyle. This is not exactly a controversial opinion. Here in Alberta, we reformed welfare, and we heard all kinds of howling about how we were punishing the poor, and dire predictions of kids starving and a rapid growth in homelessness, yada yada. Guess what happened? Most of the people who had their benefits cut went to work. Today, our underclass population is much smaller, and our economy healthier. > [@](#): > > This kind of dark ages style judgmentalism is the biggest flaw in Conservatism. It’s about hurting everyone who doesn’t live up to the 1950s office worker family ideal just for being unfortunate or different. Or it’s about setting up conditions such that the children of those people might actually find better lives for themselves. > [@](#): > > If the marriage isn’t going to work then you want to punish the spouses for it? You’d rather someone stayed unhappily married over fear of bankruptcy? No, I’d rather that everyone was healthy. But the fact of the matter is that when you make divorce easier, you get more divorce, and with it more social problems. This is called a moral hazard, and it’s an unfortunate fact. We all want to help people, but we also don’t want to set up a situation whereby more people put themselves in situations that require the help. It’s not good for them or anyone else. > [@](#): > > This I actually agree with. The only difference is I include healthcare in that safety net. Do you think it’s right people sometimes have to choose between vital medicine or rent? Between bankruptcy or death? That they’re stuck at a job they hate, but can’t move on lest their health problem become a pre-existing condition? And here I thought poor people were already covered under Medicaid, and children under S-CHIP. > [@](#): > > People need the basics, including basic food, shelter, water, safety, and healthcare. Anyone who settled for just the basics wouldn’t amount to much anyway. I don’t think anyone should starve in a wealthy country like the U.S. Nor do I think their children should go uneducated, or that they should die because they don’t have access to health care. > [@](#): > > Yet which country has the more better off population? It sure isn’t the US, if you go by happiness, infant mortality, or life expectancy. Life expectancy in the U.S. is greatly affected by high rates of obesity (the highest in the world) and homicide. Infant mortality differences have a lot to do with the fact that the U.S. goes to extreme lengths to keep premature babies alive, which means that when they die they are counted as infant deaths while in other countries they are not. > [@](#): > > How much does the average Brit have to spend on healthcare expenses verses the average American? I can guarantee you it’s quite a bit less for the Brits even if you include taxes collected. And if you’re a Brit and you develop cancer, you have a 45% chance of surviving. In the U.S., you have a 67% chance of surviving. Public health giveth, and public health taketh away. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2009, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-the-working-poor-in-our-society/504904/54 "2009-08-01T02:11:36Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > Up until 2 years ago my husband and I were both college-educated, middle class people. He worked as a robotics engineer for many years before opening his own business - which he had to shut down when he became too disabled to work. No problem - I was still gainfully employed and earning a _very_ comfortable middle-class living for both of us, with money left over for a few expensive hobbies as well as savings and _no debt whatsoever_… yes, were “the sort of person who becomes a poor person”. > > Oh, and my husband’s 5 patents and his copyrighted work did bring in some money… for awhile…until new technology superseded the old and no one bought his stuff any more. > > Then I was laid off. And I couldn’t find work that paid as much as my prior job, despite my college degree. So I have doing “ditch-digger work” so we can eat. Oh, yes, we’re just the sort of losers who “deserve” to be poor. > > Thanks a lot for throwing us on the trash heap of society. That makes me feel soooooooo good to be labeled a loser by the likes of you. A) A person who is physically disabled doesn’t match my description. If a person can’t be demonstrated to be a loser, I don’t see any reason to treat him as such. If he can show that he has a good reason why he can’t do any sort of physical nor mental labor, then I have no issue with providing a stable disability check. B) You will likely rise back out of your ditch digger job because you aren’t the ditch digger type. It’s unfortunate that you have fallen into temporarily, but unlike your husband there’s no way to demonstrate that you aren’t a loser beyond climbing the ladder again. I suppose that we could try some system whereby your income is capped at whatever the highest annual income you made was, but I don’t foresee that happening anytime soon. ---
**Author:** ![Sateryn76](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e4f/32.png) [@Sateryn76](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sateryn76)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2009, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-the-working-poor-in-our-society/504904/55 "2009-08-01T02:13:51Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > Really? > > I work for a landlord. I know what rents are where I live. We currently have a housing shortage in my area, and yes, a one-room IS $500/month. > > You claim you can find apartments for less than $500/month? SHOW ME. I’m serious, SHOW ME. Sorry to do this to you again, but check The Times: LAKE STATION 1 Bedroom $450mo. heat included credit check required HAMMOND 1-2 Bedroom apartments starting at $475 a month. Appliances included. EAST CHICAGO- 2 bedroom/ 1 bath $450/mo + dep. utilities paid by tenant. No pets. LOWELL: STUDIO $390/mo. 1 Bedroom $490/mo. 2 Bedroom $575/mo. Appliances Included VALPARAISO: 1 Bedroom Duplex Apartment on West Side $450mo. No Pets. I only bring this up because you seem so angry about your terrible situation, and I don’t blame you. But is it possible that the constant hopelessness you feel actually prevents you from getting up and out of poverty? I don’t mean to single you out, since you seem like a great person who hit a really bad string of luck. But this kind of behavior seems to keep poor people behind. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2009, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-the-working-poor-in-our-society/504904/56 "2009-08-01T02:15:04Z")
> [@Munch](#): > > You’re going to argue that the poverty line is too high? Wow. Here’s a link to a living wage calculator: > > [Living Wage Calculator - Living Wage Calculation for King County, Washington](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? That calculator is an absolute crock. The implication is that the “living wage” is dependent on how many kids you have, and that it’s a single working parent household. That’s just not the way things work; jobs don’t (and shouldn’t) pay more because you have more children. It’s hardly some sort of moral failure on our society’s part when a guy who makes about 30k a year and has no kids and a stay-at-home wife has a kid, and BANG! he’s not making a “living wage”. His stupid ass should have kept his cock in his pants, or should have his wife get off her ass and get a job if money’s a concern. The other thing I question is how many people _really_ make minimum wage? Most people don’t stay at minimum wage very long- it doesn’t take much to get a raise of a dollar or so at a retail place. Wait staff and waitresses, etc… tend to make FAR more than minimum, at least on a per-hour basis. IMHO, you have to be some sort of inept wretch to make minimum wage and stay at that salary. Most teenagers don’t even make minimum for summer jobs. ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2009, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-the-working-poor-in-our-society/504904/57 "2009-08-01T02:20:09Z")
Blalron: Let’s say you want to buy a new pair of jeans. You go to your favorite store that sells such items. They have a pair of jeans you like for $50. You wouldn’t mind paying that much for those pair of jeans, so you decide to buy them. Do you pay the store (a) $50 or (b) an amount in excess of $50? Similarly, when one person (“Employer”) wants to purchase services from another person (“Employee”), why would (or should) Employer pay any more than what Employee is willing to work for? ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2009, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-the-working-poor-in-our-society/504904/58 "2009-08-01T02:30:45Z")
> [@Sateryn76](#): > > Sorry to do this to you again, but check The Times: > > LAKE STATION 1 Bedroom $450mo. heat included credit check required > HAMMOND 1-2 Bedroom apartments starting at $475 a month. Appliances included. > EAST CHICAGO- 2 bedroom/ 1 bath $450/mo + dep. utilities paid by tenant. No pets. > LOWELL: STUDIO $390/mo. 1 Bedroom $490/mo. 2 Bedroom $575/mo. Appliances Included > VALPARAISO: 1 Bedroom Duplex Apartment on West Side $450mo. No Pets. I suspect that poor Mexicans might find a roommate to live with so that the cost is split. Living 5 or 6 people to a room just isn’t going to kill anyone–lots of societies live that way as a matter of course. ---
**Author:** ![adhay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecd19e/32.png) [@adhay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adhay)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2009, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-the-working-poor-in-our-society/504904/59 "2009-08-01T02:40:11Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > I suspect that poor Mexicans might find a roommate to live with so that the cost is split. Living 5 or 6 people to a room just isn’t going to kill anyone–lots of societies live that way as a matter of course. Always welcomed by your average landlord in the US. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2009, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-the-working-poor-in-our-society/504904/60 "2009-08-01T02:40:50Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > Blalron: Let’s say you want to buy a new pair of jeans. You go to your favorite store that sells such items. They have a pair of jeans you like for $50. You wouldn’t mind paying that much for those pair of jeans, so you decide to buy them. > > Do you pay the store (a) $50 or (b) an amount in excess of $50? > > Similarly, when one person (“Employer”) wants to purchase services from another person (“Employee”), why would (or should) Employer pay any more than what Employee is willing to work for? Common decency. People are not blue jeans, to be worn and discarded. Or to rip fashionable holes in. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-the-working-poor-in-our-society/504904.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-the-working-poor-in-our-society/504904.md?page=4)