Honest day’s work amounts to poverty
By Lynn Stuart Parramore, AlterNet
Why should people in the richest country on Earth toil long hours for wages that would make Charles Dickens recoil in horror? A lot of Americans have been wondering the same thing.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that in 2012, 1.57 million Americans earned the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. Millions more were just above that figure, and plenty actually ended up below it. Over 60 percent of the minimum wage earners in 2012 were in retail, or in leisure and hospitality, which includes hotels and restaurants.
If we raise the minimum wage, an estimated 28 million will get a direct or indirect benefit, because when the wage goes up bosses often raise the wages of workers hovering right above the new minimum. So one in five American workers will take more money home. It’s not a silver bullet — employers will still try to avoid requirements by hiring contract workers and other tactics, and some workers will still end up exempt. But it’s a start.
What a crock of rubbish.
The problem is that we have men and women in their 30’s, 40’s & 50’s at the height of what should be their peak income earning years working at Target or Home Depot because the Obama Depression is so severe that they cannot find work at all anywhere else.
Get a clue – the Obama Depression is the problem, not the minimum wage.
BitterKlinger, I don’t care what your perception of how Obama has DEALT with the financial crash of ’08 (’08 being the key here), but that crisis happened BEFORE Obama was elected OR sworn into office!
YOU need to “GET A CLUE”!
BK do you actually believe the things you write?
Blah, blah, blah, blame Bush. Blah, blah, blah, blame Bush
Blah, blah, blah, pretend Bush didn’t exist, blah, blah, didn’t get us into two un-winnable wars, blah, blah, didn’t destroy a budget surplus, blah, blah, took our foreign policy back 100 years, blah, etc, blah, etc BLAH!
Only slightly more than 5% of hourly wage workers are at minimum wage levels. That’s from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, btw. How many of those are teenagers in their first jobs? It’s not the monstrous issue the Administration would have you believe it is. It’s just another distraction, with a couple dozen human interest stories to tug at your heartstrings while the Feds work on their takeover of private industry.
At what point will people hold the Obama Regime responsible for the havoc they have wreaked upon the nation?
Klinger, please enlighten us as to exactly what havoc the “Obama Regime” has “wreaked” upon our nation.
So does this guy take himself seriously? Or are they a troll?
biggerpicture,
Do you live in a cave?
Are you that blind?
Obamacare is a complete mess, a billion dollars for a web site that utterly failed. Does anyone have respect for team Obama after that?
WOW
but it gets much worse from there;
Millions of people forced off their health insurance plans.
He won the years biggest lie contest. No challengers even.
This and it’s myriad of unintended, though predicted, consequences alone puts Obama as a contender for the worst President in American History.
Dogula,
When you count the number of workers earning less than the proposed $10/hr the % of those affected by an increase rises to 20+% of the labor force, or approx. 28 million people mentioned in this article. I believe that constitutes slightly more than “A couple dozen human interest stories” you callously refer to. Why do you fail to mention that not only do you oppose a raise in the min. wage, you oppose the mere existence of it at all? Why do you not admit that your “new way of thinking” also includes repealing child labor laws, overtime and family leave laws, workplace safety rules, the rights of workers to collectively bargain and a plethora of other regressive hate gov’t political platforms proposed by hate radio and the teabaggers?
I don’t think destroying all the gains made by workers in the last century benefits anyone but the 1%ers whose boots the lunatic fringe randoids so desire to lick.
BK, get off the double strength Faux News kook-aid. Stop being an angry old man who is likely on any number of federal programs including social security, Medicare , you name-it taxpayer subsidies.
People like you are against any government program UNTIL it directly benefits YOU.
So keep heading out to the mailbox for your government checks and subsidies while shouting down everything else you can’t take advantage of.
I want you off my payroll. Go out and get your own healthcare policy. Disavow ANY program that is paid for by the taxpayer. You libertarians cry and cry about all this but you are the real cowards on the take.
BB you can disagree all you want. I got my numbers from the most recently available data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Real numbers, nothing to do with your wished-for $10 an hour minimum wage. All the sob stories in the world don’t change the actual numbers.
If you don’t like your pay, go get another job. So far, nobody in America is a slave chained to a job. But you cannot legislate prosperity. Government is an incredibly inefficient system for charity. Some people will always be poor. In spirit as in body.
“Obamacare is a complete mess, a billion dollars for a web site that utterly failed. Does anyone have respect for team Obama after that? ”
It actually ended up working.
Casa, you do realise it was a total mess and took two months to fix.
As Far as ObamaCare working it is way too early to tell. Last reports are that the older and people with are doing the signups and the healthy young people are not doing it in numbers that would support the current rates. Also there are many employers that are dropping their health care like Monte bleu just did, over 800 employees had to find their own coverage and that is just this one location, which is only 15% of the companies employees.
Reloman, in the grand scheme of things two months of problems is nothing. We’ve been working on the constitution for well over 220 years and we still have not perfected it, have we?
SOME of us think the Constitution is just fine the way it is, thank you very much.
Dog, when written did it allow women to vote? Minorities or non land owners to vote? Did it prohibit slavery?
Those changes and many more weren’t achieved in a two month period, were they? Isn’t it an ever evolving document, and written to be so?
Or would you prefer to return to life under the original writing?
You are addressing a fundamentalist Angry Sky Mantian…. what are your expectations?
And the Obama Depression continues to take its toll.
Awesome! You can’t make this level of heartlessness up.i think it was Jonathan Swift who satirically proposed tge starving Masses eat their babies. ‘Listening’ to dogfart, cj, and the other faux-newsians on this thread advocate bending over for the 1%ers would be great theater if it weren’t so pernicious. I wonder what happens when the Constitution contradicts the Judeo-christian bible- does Dogula have to double her meds and merlot?
Good lord!
The Obama Regime’s record and its painful legacy of debt, unemployment and despair is what plagues our nation.
@Dogula-and some of us think the United States Constitution is a ‘living’ document subject to Amending. Bet you love the Bill of Rights.
BiggerPicture, hopefully it works but if the young and healthy do not sign up the whole thing may come down. and the premuims will no longer be affordable for those on it and people will leave because they cant afford it. On the bright side for me the VA sent me a notice telling me I can sign up with them for free. So I may go that way and save some money.
A.B.
Well said.
and
hmmm,
… you apparently miss the obvious,
The amendment process is spelled out in the constitution and thereby it is part of it, obvious huh.
Dog is absolutely right in saying that many of us think it is “just fine” and like the constitution the way it is.
Your argument indicates a logic and comprehension problem on your part.
The problem is progressive liberals that use the term “living doc” tend to think that usurp the constitution is OK. Typical, arrogant the “end justify’s the means” mentality.
“The problem is progressive liberals that use the term “living doc” tend to think that usurp the constitution is OK.”
Typical straw man logical fallacy.
Try writing in paragraphs so that you take up less space with your bullplop.
@CJ-yeah i miss the obvious all the time. thanks for pointing that out to me. my apologies. please help me out, i want to understand your quote-
‘Your argument indicates a logic and comprehension problem on your part. The problem is progressive liberals that use the term “living doc” tend to think that usurp the constitution is OK. Typical, arrogant the “end justify’s the means” mentality.’
Would you please explain that section of your comment… since a) i am too dense to figure it out on my own, and b) too arrogant to figure out ‘how the ends justify the means’ relates to my belief system. While you have the floor, please expound and expand upon ‘…think that usurp the constitution is OK.’ I’m still trying to wrap my head around the logic of that statement(actually i’m still trying to figure out the MEANING of that statement) though I’m sure a mental giant such as yourself, who knows me SO well, can explain it in language that is easily understood, graciously taking into account my limited comprehension skills. Thank you.
Hummmm, good luck with your request from cjpubworksbitterclinger. The fox noise script he plagerizes from doesnt allow for facts, clearification, or use of logic. But you sound like a free thinker that probably already knows the answers. It does make for some real head shaking smirks as I am constantly amazed by the things that cj posts. His life in oregon must not be as much fun as he hoped for as he keeps returning to read about life here in slt. Go figure…
@go figure…the comic relief provided by CJ and his acolytes is a source of amusement. i respond to him as i do in order to point out what an idiot he appears to be. what’s funny is how smug his pronouncements sound, when their substance and style show what a petty, narrow minded, shallow intellect he is proud to possess. when people are proud to be ignorant there is little that can be done. except make money off of them a-la rush/ hannity and whatever slew of platinum bimbettes Faux News is offering up this year.
Reality dictates that the Obama Regime bears full responsibility for income inequality in our nation.
The Federal Reserve Bank policy of Quantitative Easing has made the wealthy more powerful and richer, while it has made the poor destitude. Wall Street has been flourishing at the expense of Main Street.
If Obama was serious about narrowing the gap of income inequality, Janet Yellen, the new Fed chair, would end QE immediately.
Around 2005, PC computers went to a 64 bit architecture. Wonder how many people lost jobs as these powerful computers possibly started doing more work.
Reality dictates WHAT??? Are you crazy?