Minimum wage increases to boost nation’s poor

[DainBramaged]

Source: AP

Fast-food waitress Fawn Townsend of Raleigh, N.C., knows exactly what she is going to do if her salary goes up with Tuesday’s increase in the federal minimum wage: start saving for a car so she can find a second job to make ends meet.

“My goal personally is to get a vehicle so I can independently go back and forth to work and maybe pick up extra work so I can have that extra income, because minimum wage is not cutting it,” said Townsend, who is 24 and single.


Many lawmakers, along with advocates for low-wage workers, are celebrating the first increase in the federal minimum wage in a decade. Yet many acknowledge that raising it from $5.15 an hour to $5.85 will provide only meager help for some of the lowest paid workers.

About 1.7 million people made $5.15 or less in 2006, according to the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.





Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19889276/

---

Chump change, about $28 a week or $96 a month before taxes for a forty hour week. And it may only put the poor into paying higher taxes with no real income gain.

[Selatius]

1. It should be raised to 9 dollars an hour and indexed to inflation.

The only problem is Democrats won't index it to inflation because that would remove from them a political football that they can use every several years to beat Republicans with, but that came back to bite us all in the ass when Repubs controlled both the Congress and the White House.

[LifeDuringWartime]

18. $9!

I wish I made $9/hour. I'm making slightly above minimum in MA.

[seriousstan]

19. Why $9? Why not $19?

[SayWhatYo]

21. I think $30/hr is a fair min wage

:P

[Vinca]

2. Where I live, someone working for minimum wage couldn't afford

to live in anything but a box unless they receive some kind of subsidy. It's hard to imagine there are people in this world who gleefully deny a decent existence to their fellow human beings. I caught a snippet of the dreaded Glen Beck show early yesterday morning and a guest was explaining that huge corporate profits are possible because workers aren't unionized and don't have to be given cost of living raises anymore. Greed rules.

[iamjoy]

4. Well, To Be Fair

Some people justify not increasing the minimum wage because of naivete, not heartlessness. Not only do they believe that raising the minimum wage will lead to fewer jobs (I wonder how many jobs they think we could create if we did away with the minimum wage altogether), but they believe that no one is trying to raise a family on minimum wage, that it's mostly teens and college students who are still supported by their parents.

I disagree on both counts.

[fasttense]

3. An interesting poll at AOL

What do you think of the minimum wage increase?
It's not enough 77%
It's fair 17%
It's too much 6%

Total Votes: 122,382

This pathetic increase in minimum wage is not fooling anyone. Very few Americans think it is close to being large enough.

Have you ever had a job that paid the minimum wage?
Yes 77%
No 23%

Total Votes: 114,927

Perhaps because most Americans have had to work at minimum wage and know for a fact it is way, way too low.

If you are receiving minimum wage your boss is telling you I would pay you less if I could.

http://money.aol.com/news/articles/_a/federal-minimum-wage-rising-this-week/20070721184009990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001

[safeinOhio]

5. Re pubs

are the low tax, low wage party. That's a great argument for all working people to vote against them.

[clixtox]

6. Boost?

What a sad travesty of a caring society we are, is this small bone being thrown out to the working indigent going to make a real difference?

How these virtual slaves making less than $12,000/year can exist is beyond me.

The surprising thing is that there is not an armed revolution underway in the USA to wrest the control of our lives from those who obviously don't give a damn about us or our struggles to survive in this economy. Of course the educational establishment has dumbed down the quality and substance of what is taught since the fifties and sixties so most folks can't articulate their frustrations or even have a clue about what to do to improve their lives or those of their children.

Our fascist police state, abetted by ignorant "patriots", does a fabulous job of squashing anyone who steps out of line. Only compliant sheep are desired, everyone else is wallowing in their deep sheep poop.

My generation in the sixties was the last to be willing to take the sort of dramatic, revolutionary actions that expressed the rage we felt then and now. That surely wasn't palatable for our masters.

Contemporary students subjected to "public education" are discouraged from thinking critically, they are only taught how to be consumer/producer ants and to follow directions. World and local news today primarily consists of the latest folly of Lindsey, Paris or Britney. Stupidity celebrated! Gross...

If you are not among the very rich or the super rich then you are just living a life of more or less quiet desperation. Only small differences in degree separate our vast numbers of poor working citizens from working poor in so-called third world countries.

When our prisons are crammed full of poor people who believed that they needed to do petty crimes like dealing drugs to survive where is the shame? We are so smug with our inhumanity.

The USA sucks on so many levels... Especially our political system which is set up the way it is only to keep any real power from the people.

Are we having fun yet...

[Autumn Colors]

8. No revolution because people are too busy working 2-3 jobs to pay their bills (n/t)

[DainBramaged]

9. And because of forces beyond their control

being forced to work at menial jobs because competition from illegal immigration has pushed down the average wage. I have a close friend my age, tries to get extra work on weekends doing day labor for landscapers and contractors. He gets chased away from the gathering places because he isn't Latino. So it's not only forces from corporations who want to push the living wage down, it's the service industry too.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

25. Boost:

boost /bust/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–verb (used with object) 1. to lift or raise by pushing from behind or below.
2. to advance or aid by speaking well of; promote: She always boosts her hometown.
3. to increase; raise: to boost prices; to boost the horsepower of the car by 20 percent.
4. Slang. to steal, esp. to shoplift: Two typewriters were boosted from the office last night.

[dazzlerazzle]

7. 10 years 70cent raise

The article says someone working one of these jobs at 40 hours per week would bring home $12,168.00 per year before taxes. More than half of that would go to rent. If not for food stamps, medicade cards, utility subsidies, and the earned income credit, these families could never survive.

[Warren Stupidity]

10. "start saving for a car so she can find a second job "

That basically summarizes the Raw Deal of 30 years of Republican Rule.

[zehnkatzen]

11. Watch her rent go up...

...that's the other gift she's getting.

Something that always happens when the have-mores here that the have-lesses have a little more. The say to themselves "my, how did my money make it into your pocket"...and look for ways to chisel it back out.

[LetsThink]

12. What, $12k annually -----

.... A step in the right direction but, does anyone know a family, an individual for that matter, able to live on $12k a year? Tell me where and, I may move!

I know the Senate Dems wanted to do more but it's the question of 60 votes... always the question of 60 votes. At least we can call for hearings now.

[Tab]

13. This is stupid

$8/hr minimum. The only way I can see living on $5.x /hr is living with your parents or someone else.

For an interesting viewpoint on this, read "Nickeled and Dimed" by Barbara Ehrenreich.

[flashl]

14. What is the answer?

When thinking about poverty and the working poor at one time the first thought we have been conditioned to think about is unskilled workers. Sadly, a college degree is no longer a buffer from poverty. The only foreseeable growth in occupations here are only more low-wage jobs and those jobs will not require college degrees. So, we continue to produce college graduates who compete for low-wage jobs that keeps them at or below federal poverty levels. While … an investment banker receives a $20 million Xmas bonus … a trader with Goldman Sachs receives a $120 million bonus. Is the moral to the story is we ALL should become Sachs employees?

[Systematic Chaos]

15. My wife and I work for the same company, making $11/hour

We started at just $9/hour over a year ago.

According to my math, $11/hour is still less than the buying power of the inflation adjusted minimum wage of about 1974 when it was at its peak. For what we do, given that standard, we're worth about $18/hour easy doing low-level tech support.

Oh wait, I forgot. Thanks to the tech bubble bust, outsourcing and those fucking H-whatever visas, Americans don't deserve shit for computer work. Especially not relatively simple stuff like what we do. :grr:

[conspirator]

16. Even the software developer salary has eroded. It only pays to be a programmer

if you do job hoping.

[DainBramaged]

20. Yup, I'll make less than $26,000 this year gross for 45 hours a week

After deducting nearly $15,000 for rent, utilities, cable and insurance etc., what could i have left each week to live on?


About $50 bucks

for everything

The Middle Class Dream is a nightmare. I would be dead if I tried to support a family on that.

[jus_the_facts]

17. You still have to work an HOUR to pay for a gallon of milk....a WHOLE DAY to buy a tank of gas....

:think:

[HeeBGBz]

22. Like that even does anything

I make $8.50 and hour and I barely can pay my rent and bills, let alone groceries. I predict I will give up and go back home in the next two months because I'm tired of scraping by in order to have a place of my own. It's wearing on me bigtime.

[lovuian]

23. Thank you Democratic Congress pat on the back

:woohoo:

[BrokenBeyondRepair]

24. a car? get a bike..

[happyslug]

26. So Minimum wage is now $12,168 per year, big deal

40 hours per week times 52 weeks is 2080 hours per year (Most people use 2000, the 80 hours is viewed as Vacation times). Thus 2080 times 5.85 equals 12,168 per year (Without Overtime).

Given that most retailers work PAR-TIME, most get less.

[KharmaTrain]

27. And How Much More Have They Had To Pay This Year

in the masssive GOOP tax increase called the hike in gas prices? How many more of those precious dollars were spent on higher fuel bills last winter or are now shelling out for higher food prices thanks to the increases in trasnportation? Save for a car? On minimum wage, one can barely keep the tank filled and the insurance paid.

I lived in "minimum wage" and independent contracting jobs...working 50 to 60 hours a week and 52 weeks a year at several jobs to get a 'living wage'. Plus what isn't mentioned is how these people are also shut out of insurance, benefits and other perks that used to be offered to all workers.

Any gains any will make on this long-overdue rise in the minimum wage (which boooshie compromised to get the May Iraq funding through the Senate) was spent on the first weeks of the year. Meanwhile his buddies with the large tax breaks just watch the market going up and up and laugh at the riff-raff.