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Originally Posted by 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). ... 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.
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Where to start? First of all, these people are unskilled laborers. I will not argue that most of them work very hard. They have to. Anyone can do their job, they do not have skills that are in such high demand that only certain people can do said jobs.
A living wage is a bad idea. It makes everything more expensive. So these people will be paid more, but they will have to pay more for everything they buy. Their higher wages will drive prices up. And/Or less people will be hired, because companies can only afford to pay so much. More people will be jobless and having to work two jobs whenever possible. More people will be on welfare, since unskilled jobs will be harder to get.
I do agree that many companies could pay their workers better, but which ones? At what times? As for corparations, their profits only make up 9% of the nations income distribution. They use this for later ventures and business expenses. Proprietors make up another 9%. These small business owners make as much as corparations. Are they to blame, too? 18% is not that much considering only 9% is corparations. Rents are 2% and interest is 8%. 72% of income goes to wages and salaries. Out of that 72%, the top 10% pay 64% of the taxes and the top 50% pay 96% of taxes. I do not know where you get your information, but I get mine from my textbook, which uses statistics from 2002.