Weekly Discussion Topic: April 13-19 (Livable Wage)

[BwareDWare94 723]

Last week's discussion prompted questions about the highway robbery that occurs with the wages that bars and eating establishments offer their employees due to on-the-job tips that their employees receive. So that got me thinking about what I myself would consider a livable wage.

Now, let's be clear. Every wealthy white collar dipshit seems to think that the blue collar class only needs the money it takes to get their bills paid and that "they should have worked harder" in order to line up better employment opportunities. Hilariously uninformed opinions aside, hourly pay for full time employees should at the very least allow those employees a moderate standard of life. The fact of the matter is that we all need enough income to not only pay our bills, but to be able to at least somewhat enjoy our time off the clock as well.

 

So where does each of you draw that line, if you're hourly workers? For me, I would say that I could get by making $12 an hour, as long as overtime is frequently available at my place of work. Especially now that I'm paying back my school loans, I don't have time for paychecks that only have three numbers before the first decimal. So if I was only getting paid for 80 hours every two week period, I'd have to change my answer to $15 an hour.

 

Knowing how hard it is to get OT at many occupations, I'm going to say that the borderline livable wage for the average everyday American would be about $15 an hour, and even then, money would be tight.

Obviously, there are certain kinds of work that only warrant that nine to ten dollars an hour range, so let's try to avoid bringing that into the discussion.

[Bucman 891]

Its hard to put a dollar on something like this. Livable wage can be different in every area, some areas 15 an hour you could be living a nice life and others you could be poor. I feel that 10 an hour would be plenty in Ohio. But once you realize that if everyone is making 10 an hour, businesses are going to jack up prices to make up for the loss in profit. Somethings just can't be fixed and I believe this one of them. Those low paying jobs aren't mean to be careers and I understand some people have no choice, but it is what is. Learn to budget money and you will be fine.

 

The government has plenty of things in place for the low class citizens that struggle, some take advantage of it and others are just too prideful to accept it. In fact, I think our government is almost encouraging some to life off the system with how easy it is for some to get it.

[BwareDWare94 723]

I never meant to imply that low paying jobs deserve more than what they make. I just meant to find out what we all think is a livable wage. I mean, I don't believe fast food employees should be raised or anything like that. I don't think people who work in janitorial/housekeeping jobs should be raised. It is what it is.

[southgadawg 52]

No offense bware but could had been a few more options on the choices (not sure how many you are limited to).

 

But tbh it is VERY difficult to put a specific dollar amount on this because as was mentioned earlier it is very dependent on what area of the country you live in. Even within the state of Georgia the cost of living is vastly different here in rural South Georgia than it would be around metro Atlanta or even other parts of North Georgia. I will be probably the only one who selected $10 an hour because tbh around here you can get by on that fairly easily. In fact the cost of living index here is 81.1 (100 is US average). The MEDIAN HOUSEHOLD income here is only $30,629 here while in all of Georgia it is $47,589...(all 2009 figures on income).

 

I wouldn't mind seeing cost of living index and median household income for the counties and states of each of the posters to get a better ideal of their point of view (if that makes sense). Those numbers are easy to get from http://www.city-data.com/

 

 

 

I think most people have forgotten how to live frugally and also that the common person is far more materialistic than they were 35 years ago (i chose that number because at that point I was 13 years old and working odd jobs to make money----paid CASH for my first car at 15).

 

Not exactly what you are asking but for the record I am terribly against raising minimum wage. Every time in my memory when it went up the basic items (not luxury ones) seemed to go up almost immediately afterwards. I have no hard data to back that up..although i probably could search for it (just going by my memory). When I first entered the NORMAL work force minimum wage was only $3.35 an hour I think or somewhere there about (1982). Basic necessities are terribly more expensive than they were then. I seriously remember buying a bottle soda for .10, bread 3 loaves for $1, gas as cheap as .74 cent a gallon and a bubble gum/caramels 3 pieces for a nickel.

 

Don't get me wrong I think the pay scale in most companies is way too top heavy but I don't think raising minimum wage is the answer. I think it is counterproductive.

[oochymp 2,393]

The government has plenty of things in place for the low class citizens that struggle, some take advantage of it and others are just too prideful to accept it. In fact, I think our government is almost encouraging some to life off the system with how easy it is for some to get it.

but is that a system we should get behind?

 

As to the question at hand, the biggest issue to me with raising the minimum wage is the number of minimum wage employees who are high schoolers getting fed, clothed, and given a place to live by mom and dad while working for spending money. I didn't want to be completely talking off my ass, so I did a quick google and found a survey from the Department of Labor (Characteristics of Minimum Wage Workers: 2012) that says about a quarter of the people paid at or below the federal minimum wage are 19 or younger. Certainly some of those people are helping to support a family whether because they're in a family that needs everyone working and bringing in money or because they're recent high school graduates in their first jobs trying to get out of mom and dad's house, but the majority of people under 20 who are working are not supporting a family. I'd like to see some exemption built in for that, but I'm not sure how you would accomplish it.

 

Another interesting note from that survey is that less than 5% of hourly workers are paid at or below the federal minimum wage (to be fair, a lot of states have higher minimum wages and employers must follow that, so the percentage working at the applicable minimum wage is undoubtedly higher than that) I'm not sure where I'm going with pointing that out, but I found it interesting.

 

As for the wages listed, I'm going with $10/hr but could really go lower. I spent a year working at a Target at minimum wage ($7.25/hr) and was fine, could have been better certainly, but I did alright, and I wasn't working 40 hours every week (the managers were paranoid about going into overtime so they usually wouldn't schedule anyone for over 35 or 36 hours, I think I probably averaged about 32 hours per week) I also think crunching some numbers is appropriate here, so here are the weekly, monthly, and annual rates for the amounts listed (assuming 36 hours per week, which gives some flexibility, I'm also going by a four week month, which isn't actual but makes the math easier, I'm also using a 52 week year)

 

$10/hr

Weekly: $360

Monthly: $1440

Annual: $18,720

 

$12/hr

Weekly: $432

Monthly: $1728

Annual: $22,464

 

$15/hr

Weekly: $540

Monthly: $2160

Annual: $28080

 

$17/hr

Weekly: $612

Monthly: $2448

Annual: $31824

Edited April 15, 2014 by oochymp

[BwareDWare94 723]

I didn't mean to get us discussing minimum wage, because there are certain jobs that better damn well not pay more than minimum wage. There's no reason some high school kid working a fast food or housekeeping/janitorial job can't be happy with minimum wage to ten bucks an hour.

 

This is about full time employees working real jobs. Real, capable, competent people. There are plenty of incompetent older people working shit jobs, but they don't deserve to be paid more just because they're older. Incompetence in the manual labor world always has and always should equate to not being paid well.

 

I'm trying to talk about competent workers and what kinds of wages they should settle for.

[Bucman 891]

What do you consider a competent worker/job?

 

Because judging by what your saying those competent workers are already making enough money to live off of.

Edited April 15, 2014 by Bucman

[oochymp 2,393]

I didn't mean to get us discussing minimum wage, because there are certain jobs that better damn well not pay more than minimum wage. There's no reason some high school kid working a fast food or housekeeping/janitorial job can't be happy with minimum wage to ten bucks an hour.

 

This is about full time employees working real jobs. Real, capable, competent people. There are plenty of incompetent older people working shit jobs, but they don't deserve to be paid more just because they're older. Incompetence in the manual labor world always has and always should equate to not being paid well.

 

I'm trying to talk about competent workers and what kinds of wages they should settle for.

then I direct you to the second number I pointed out: less than 5% of workers who are paid hourly are paid at the federal minimum wage, here's another interesting chart from the DOL: Table B-3. Average hourly and weekly earnings of all employees on private nonfarm payrolls by industry sector, seasonally adjusted the overall average that hourly employees are paid is about $24/hr, that chart has a breakdown by industry type

[BwareDWare94 723]

What do you consider a competent worker/job?

 

Because judging by what your saying those competent workers are already making enough money to live off of.

 

In a full time profession, I would argue that a lot of competent full-time workers do make enough.

 

A lot of people who don't think they make enough money, in my experience, have had mountains of credit card debt, mountains of self inflicted financial woes.

 

But I guess I was just hoping to discuss what each of us would individually assume we need to get by.

[Duck Fallas 209]

I think the answers will be based on a number of factors; do you have children? A house? A car? What exactly do you consider making a living?

 

Because I have children, I know that I could not live on less than $25/hr and be able to provide a comfortable life. However, I made some solid choices in my early 20s and don't have to worry about providing.

 

I do have a job, though I have not held an hourly position in many years. I don't make a large amount of money, but it would be sufficient to keep my family housed, fed and clothed.