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Originally Posted by irateplatypus
man... it's so nice talking about something other than iraq or bush-bashing.
if we're talking about people needing to make a living wage while working 40 hours a week (as that seems to be the starting point on this thread), then consider this:
we'll start with a very conservative estimate... say just $8 an hour for unskilled labor. the cashier's at walmart start off close to that. for a couple...
$8 an hour, multiplied by 40 hours a week. 52 weeks in a year times 40 hours a week... double that figure to find total income for a married couple.
the figure comes to $33,280 for two unskilled fulltime incomes. i'm not saying i would want live on that, especially with a wife and maybe a child. however, that isn't bad is it? before anyone thinks i'm on a high-horse... i used to be poor. dirt poor. i'm a bit embarrassed to say my family even enrolled in welfare for a couple months when i was very young. still, for the basics of life... that isn't an unjustifiably low figure, is it? i know that here in Oklahoma $33,000 will take you a lot farther than most places... do unskilled labor jobs pay more in areas with a higher cost of living? i should know that.
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No, you are right in that it isn't
bad. And I'd be willing to be somewhat mollified if workers were getting that.
Unskilled jobs do not pay more anywhere, whatever Wal-Mart pays over there it will pay over here.
The problem becomes if the couple has children. We could argue that they shouldn't have children, but if they do, they need child care in order for them to work. I would rather someone stay home, personally. I think we know by now (in terms of crime and violence) what happens when children raise themselves. But they can live on it, I'll grant that, I just don't see it as socially desirable in the long run, personally. I used to be dirt poor, too, BTW (and still am by government figures, but everyone here knows that should change when I get my degree, so it's a different situation nowdays).
I think you realize that they won't be able to save anything for their retirement with that amount of money. This is one of my greatest concerns with the social security issue.
How much taxes do they pay on that? If they are, say, in a 15% bracket, they really only get ~$28,000 right? Then we add in state taxes, sales taxes, and misc. taxes, and we start to see the money isn't quite working out anymore. But I'll grant that it may still be livable in some states. We need people to be able to live in California who works these jobs, too. I would like to have someone besides a Ph. D. graduate hand me my bucket of chicken. I don't know of anywhere one could live on a dual income of <$28K in Southern California. It's true the price of living is out of control. But dense cities have a high concentration of both low-paying jobs and low income people. So something is going to give--usually it's the prison walls.
The real problem, irate, is that not many families are getting 2 full time jobs. Not because they don't want to work, they aren't to be had. Many people are working multiple jobs, although I don't have the current figures. They have to do this because Wal-Mart is not one of the companies that allows full time work. Their upper management employees have full-time work and benefits, but their rank and file doesn't--they fall into that category I mentioned up above: "involuntary part-time workers" comprising ~3 million people of our workforce.