Minimum wage

In Bangladesh workers get paid 10 cents a day. U.S. companies should be able to pay their employees the same thing.

-- Sincerely, the arch-con Repube free-market race-to-the-bottom loonies.

 

Winner, winner ...

Executive pay has climed from 8 times that of the lowest-paid worker to 400 times, or some such ridiculous increase, with supposedly no damage to business.

But some guy working at a Seven-11 getting a $.50 raise so he can make $320 a week is going to foster economic Armageddon? Sorry if I'm cynical.

 

A family (including children) can indeed live on eight bucks an hour, if both parents are earning it. Tens of million of American families prove this fact daily, weekly, monthly and yearly. If only one parent is earning it, it is unbelievably hard, but I have seen it done at least temporarily. Granted, it is almost impossible to achieve while paying for healthcare unless it is received through a job.

Does it suck? Yes. But if you've never done it, don't say it's impossible, because plenty of people pull it off.

Part of what prolongs a recession such as this is the arrogance that causes people to go jobless for six, 12, 24 months before even considering a job that pays 12, 10, maybe even eight dollars an hour. Such arrogance expands joblessness, expands government obligations and slows economic recovery.

 

Yes, the arrogance of the unemployed is our true problem.

Thank you for cutting through the clutter.

 

I would ask what you consider living.

 

I really doubt that when Washington raised minimum wage by 3 bucks, that the sportswriter right out of college who was making 10 bucks an hour, got an increase in a wage. That's the other problem.

 

"I would ask what you consider living."

Well, it's not all iPods and cell phones, but it's doable. Heck, you can even live better because you won't be able to afford crappy restaurant food.

The tricky part is that you have to be incredibly good at managing your money, including at least a little emergency savings.

And if you are that good at managing things, you shouldn't be making minimum wage.

 

Yep,that's my world.

As far as the difference between states, having lived a number of places, I recognize that the cost of living varies widely. $300 per week goes a lot further in the deep south than it does in New York, California or Washington.

 

$300 a week? You're shitting me.

Jesus, I made that 30 years ago and I considered myself badly paid back then.

 

Had a college professor (Econ of Poverty) who pointed out that Kansas has the lowest minimum wage in the country ... something like $2.90/hr. ... and then she proceeded to note that she believed Kansas was also the only state still teaching creationism. She was the sweetest professor I had ... found me at graduation and congratulated me personally ... never heard her preach politics or religion in any of her other lectures, but that one day, she won me over entirely by equating Kansas' minimum wage with the intelligence! Nothing against Kansas, BTW, from my end. They elected Sebellius, so the state can't be all bad.

 

I always wanted to see a constitutional amendment indexing minimum wage to congressional salary.