brianna

havn’t you folks heard of the working poor? Living at or below the poverty line is not an indication of laziness -- often quite the opposite. in the USA service employees (maids, waitresses, retail workers, meat packers, etc) are paid minimum wage to do exhausting physical labor for often over 40 hours a week (at 40 hours a week on minimum wage an employee will earn $10712 before taxes the poverty line for one person living in the lower 48 states is $8,980 for two people it is $12,120). I don’t think a case can be made that service work is easy and that all people in such jobs choose to be there because they are lazy. You may argue that the working poor deserve their lifestyle because they are stupid but such an attitude, beyond being elitists and selfish, ignores the existence of a caste system in our society. The fact of the matter is that we enjoy cheap goods and corporations enjoy hearty profits all at the expense of the working poor and their families. If companies were farced to pay a living wage we could drastically reduce the cost of social programs -- but until that happens I see no reasonable way to advocate letting poor children go hungry so that you can keep your money.