In a theme park parking lot at night, a worker sleeps in her car....

[brooklynite]

Orlando Sentinel

A year after a landmark decision by Disney to raise its minimum wage for about 40,000 union workers to $15 an hour by 2021, many of those employees are better off. By October, the number of unionized workers earning more than $15 an hour had more than quadrupled to 13,057 compared to August 2018, according to the Service Trades Council Union.

But people earning near the $15 mark, long considered the gold standard for a living wage, still find their paychecks barely cover the basics — so they move farther from the attractions to find lower rent and make difficult decisions each month about whether they can pay overdue medical bills or buy enough groceries to feed a family.

They’re people like Gabby Alcantara-Anderson.

She hops off an employee bus at the lot for Magic Kingdom workers at 12:12 a.m. on a humid September night and makes a beeline for her Kia Soul where a permit on the back window reads: Frontierland Cast Member. After almost seven years at Disney, she spends her shifts monitoring rides while also answering guest complaints at the park’s Old West-themed land, home to the Splash Mountain flume and Country Bear Jamboree.

She slips out of sneakers and into black Crocs, climbs into the car, pulls out of the parking lot and heads to a 7-Eleven on Disney property. It happens to be a good night: She has enough cash stowed in the sunglasses case above her head to buy gas for the 63-mile drive to her home south of Lakeland.

But sometimes on the worst nights, when the tank is on E and she can’t scrounge even a few bucks for gas, she doesn’t leave the lot.

[ZZenith]

1. Welcome to Pottersville, Gabby Alcantara-Anderson!

[gratuitous]

2. $15 an hour was the "gold standard" for a living wage 5 or 6 years ago

Disney and other subsidy-dependent employers were successful in stalling wage increases until $15 an hour wasn't enough anymore. So when activists start pushing for $20 an hour, captains of industry have a built-in excuse: "Geez, we just 'gave' you people $15 an hour last year after six years of fighting, and now you want more?"

[TheBlackAdder]

4. In NJ, the adjusted povery level for a single person is approaching $28K a year.

.

NJ is the top or near top donor to federal taxes, yet someone living in Iowa gets the same benefit levels.

Incomes and taxes are higher here, so on average residents contribute more, yet it gets washed out to a flat rate.

Every state is treated as though the poverty level is in the mid-teens.

.

[stopdiggin]

5. many workers in the U.S.

still looking for that $15 an hour. And while I agree with your analysis .. I'd like everyone to remember that just getting to that 15 as a minimum wage .. would help a lot of people immeasurably. Consider it a first step .. and one that a lot of the public can understand and relate to? Thanks for listening.

[Newest Reality]

6. Without going into a lot of details...

I would even argue that, for some time now, $20-$30 per hour for minimum wage would be the living wage, (low-end) if wages had kept up with growth, inflation and productivity over the last several decades.

It is rather obvious that, even if you factor in the varying costs concerning location, the flat wage growth in general is starting to be very difficult to overlook and coverup.

The stress on the system and the break in the circle of producer-product-consumer is not going to function much longer unless it increases the tendency towards vulture capitalism and shock and awe or it starts to change the ratio of profit to wages. After all, our labor creates the surplus that is the source of profit and profits are doing well, but more and more of us are going into abject poverty.

Your point about the ruse of $15 is a good insight. Now, the new one is going to be automation and AI. That's going to have the ability to kill the fight for minimum wage increases more and more in a short time. "Either you take this amount or we will simply replace the labor." You can't win that and the kicker is that, not long after that, it won't even be a point of leverage for corporations to pay poorly, it will be the new mode of production and many workers, (blue and white collar) will be totally expendable.

This is not going to go well if we don't have political representation that has the capacity to recognize the fast moving influx of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on our lives. You talk about becoming a 3rd-World county, there are many indicators that we are well along the way to being on here in the USA and that is the picture of our future without a quick and appropriate response.

[marble falls]

3. If a job is worth doing, its worth being paid a living wage for doing it. Period.

[Elmer1007]

7. ssa per hour

My ssa retirement = $7.56 per hour

[marble falls]

8. Just about what I average, too. Making it because I still earn and my wife has a goodly ...

retirement from CIA and we both have good health insurance, me with VA.

[Initech]

9. Also, rent control would help.

After seeing some of the rent prices at places near Angels Stadium and Disneyland, fuck it.

[marble falls]

10. Absolutely, thats part of a living wage.