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Minimum Wage Is Not a Livable Wage (Common Dreams)
Published on Friday, December 11, 2015
Donald Trump is no stranger to inflammatory remarks, but one statement really struck home for me. During the presidential debate on November 10, Donald Trump claimed that current wages are “too high.” He repeated that claim the following day during the New England Council "Politics and Eggs" breakfast in Manchester, New Hampshire.
<snip>
The average minimum wage in this country is $7.25. Let’s do a quick thought experiment. If we assume that rent is $1,000-$1,200 a month (if we’re lucky), at minimum wage I would need to work approximately 138-166 hours to earn enough to pay rent. Then consider that many full-time workers are limited to working only 40 hours a week, that’s almost an entire month’s earnings right there, going straight to rent. But then, there’s also utilities, food, transportation costs, and other basic expenses. As an individual, I will have to choose between eating meals and paying bills. But if I had a family, how could I force my children to go hungry?
<snip>
Being poor is incredibly humiliating and stressful on a daily basis. Most poor people are incredibly hard-working; they juggle multiple jobs to compensate for lower wages, and some of them are caregivers for family members on top of that. Yet, some of the hardest working people in this country do not earn enough to regularly put food on the table. They can hardly afford to buy new clothes, much less buy property. As the largest group of consumers, they cannot even afford to consume—which, for a consumer economy, seems a real waste. Current minimum wage standards hurt our economy by depriving large numbers of people of purchasing power.
Trump has never had to earn his keep; he didn’t have to start working at age fourteen to help his family make rent, and he has certainly never struggled to pay his bills. I don’t expect him to understand what it’s actually like to try to live on minimum wage in this country. But millions of other Americans who have lived through poverty understand all too well. Most of us, as Barbara Ehrenreich poignantly wrote in a recent op-ed, are too busy dealing with being poor to write about being in poverty.
cont'd...
Link: http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/12/11/minimum-wage-not-livable-wage
Donald Trump is no stranger to inflammatory remarks, but one statement really struck home for me. During the presidential debate on November 10, Donald Trump claimed that current wages are “too high.” He repeated that claim the following day during the New England Council "Politics and Eggs" breakfast in Manchester, New Hampshire.
<snip>
The average minimum wage in this country is $7.25. Let’s do a quick thought experiment. If we assume that rent is $1,000-$1,200 a month (if we’re lucky), at minimum wage I would need to work approximately 138-166 hours to earn enough to pay rent. Then consider that many full-time workers are limited to working only 40 hours a week, that’s almost an entire month’s earnings right there, going straight to rent. But then, there’s also utilities, food, transportation costs, and other basic expenses. As an individual, I will have to choose between eating meals and paying bills. But if I had a family, how could I force my children to go hungry?
<snip>
Being poor is incredibly humiliating and stressful on a daily basis. Most poor people are incredibly hard-working; they juggle multiple jobs to compensate for lower wages, and some of them are caregivers for family members on top of that. Yet, some of the hardest working people in this country do not earn enough to regularly put food on the table. They can hardly afford to buy new clothes, much less buy property. As the largest group of consumers, they cannot even afford to consume—which, for a consumer economy, seems a real waste. Current minimum wage standards hurt our economy by depriving large numbers of people of purchasing power.
Trump has never had to earn his keep; he didn’t have to start working at age fourteen to help his family make rent, and he has certainly never struggled to pay his bills. I don’t expect him to understand what it’s actually like to try to live on minimum wage in this country. But millions of other Americans who have lived through poverty understand all too well. Most of us, as Barbara Ehrenreich poignantly wrote in a recent op-ed, are too busy dealing with being poor to write about being in poverty.
cont'd...
Link: http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/12/11/minimum-wage-not-livable-wage
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