Have we become so jaded we now refuse to pay people who work hard every day a true living wage? How much in your opinion does a person need to make each month to cover their rent/mortgage, food, utility bills, clothing, toilet paper, transportation etc. The bare essentials, no vacations, internet, cable, insurance. The bare essentials.
Never mind the minimum wage, in your opinion what does a person need to make for a living wage today?
depends on where you are...
probably at least 30,000 in small towns
and 50,000 in the city...minimum
for what most consider "living"
Reply:You actually don't need that much. I have read "Automatic Millionaire" and you don't need that much money to be successful.
Reply:"Minimum" wages and "living" wages are irrelevant. Even with laws in place that require these sorts of compensation, salaries and wages are based on competition between individuals. The pool of individuals who are capable of flipping burgers is much larger than the pool of individuals who are capable of, say, keeping the accounting records in a large company. Higher supply, lower wage. Simple. The simple fact of the matter is that what you earn is based on your intelligence, your training, and your willingness to work hard.
Companies aren't moving overseas for less expensive wages. They're moving because the folks there are willing to work much harder to earn a living than most Americans are. Most Americans seem to think they have a god given right to a plate full of food, a roof over their head, two cars in the garage, and any electronic toys they want. And someone else to pay for it all. This is simply unrealistic.
How much a person needs to survive is a different question, of course. Many of the things you list as "needs" are actually nice to haves. Transportation could be free (most people have two working legs) or very inexpensive (a decent bike only costs about $150). You don't actually "need" shelter in many areas of the world. Clothing can be gotten inexpensively and no-one "needs" fashionable clothes. You really can live pretty well on a shoe-string budget. Where I live, one person could probably quite easily survive (assuming they split rent with three other people) on about $600/month. And they would still have a car........
Reply:I'd say $20 per hour minimum, linked to the rising cost of living ( not the made up government inflation figures)
I would also make that the worldwide minimum wage, and refuse to trade with any countries that did not adhere to it.
Reply:depends on area and cost of living.at least $7/person an hour for each household member
Reply:39,000
Reply:Depends where you live. Two years ago I was paying $350/month for rent. Now I pay $1045. In some places you can live comfortably making 25,000.00 per year. In other places you can make 40,000.00 and still struggle.
Reply:$15,00 a month in Oklahoma for a single person with no dependents. You can meet you needs with some left over. That would be around $10-$12 dollars an hour. Pretty doable here.
Reply:There are so many factors in this. Where you live is important, but the length of your commute to your job and whether you use public transport or have your own car is also important. Especially in this day and age when gasoline is flirting with $3.00 a gallon in some parts of the country, and is over $3 a gallon already in others (i.e. California).
What your living situation is also is a big piece of the pie... do you own or do you rent? Does your rent go up every year? If you rent, you do not get to take it out of your taxes (though I think you can if you live in Massachusetts, at least- depends on the state).
Do you have a spouse and/or children? (You'll need to buy more groceries in this case.)
What are your state taxes and your town's taxes? These also factor in, besides the chunk the government already takes out of your check.
And are you counting health insurance on this? Or does that not count as a bare essential?
I don't think I can make a good guess out of this, as I'm living off of what I earn doing two jobs for that very reason- not wanting to constantly be in debt.
But I'd say if it's just one person living in each situation, I'd say at least $25,000 for the suburbs and $40,000 for the city as an annual wage.
Reply:I think the market should set the wages. If someone is worth more in their field, they will be rewarded for it, or the company will be punished by either that person leaving, or even worse, that person working for a competitor.
If you force increases in wages, you are inadvertently increasing the costs of merchandise, and eventually the raise is worthless.
More simply said: If you give someone a raise in a burger joint, who does not deserve the raise, then the profit ratio has decreased, which will be countered by increasing prices.
Reply:You really need to break this question down into various sections of the country. In this area, someone can live quite decently making $10 to $12 dollars an hour. They can actually survive quite well on less than that. We have low taxation, lower property costs, don't have the Winter heating expenses, etc.
Someone living in Boston couldn't survive making that much an hour. :)
Reply:Yes, especially when you see the disparity between CEO's and the workers growing so large, and the stockholders, who do little!
Money is made off the backs of workers, that does not entitle those that made it to have no responsibility toward their own workers, but many do not! Almost 1/2 of the homeless work FULL TIME, and 1/2 of American families make $25,000 or less which is not enough to live on. A one bedroom apartment goes for almost $900.00 a month in my little state. That is almost $11,000
It is obscene when you figure that 0.5% of American families, 330,000 out of 132,000,000 average income is between %853,085 and 26.5 Million a year!
Who needs 26.5 million a year in SALARY!
Reply:The two biggest variables in your question are rent and transportation.
Let's start with transportation. Is owning a car necessary? I use to be lucky enough to live 1 mile from work, 2 groceries stores, a Target, a K-mart, several different restaurants, and a movie theater. Needless to say I walked to almost everything and bought (out-right) a piece of * beater car for getting out of town... Besides that the local bus system was ok.
Rent: depends on where you live and how big of a place you want. I've heard of rooms in San Francisco being rented out for 800/mnth while you can find 1500sqft homes in the South that rent for as much.
So as you can see a "living wage" is extemely regional... One city/county might need a living wage of over $10/hr while another might be fine at $4.50/hr. So trying to formulate some national standard of living wage will not work.
Thus, this is what I tell my econ students, "If you are going to work at a low skilled min wage for most of your life then find a job in one of the Southern states and save, Save, SAVE as much as you can." That's the only region (a large region) of the US that 2 people on the federal minimum wage can afford to buy a home if they save enough to have the conventional 20% down. That is, first find out how much it costs to live in an area before working in that area.
Reply:The issue is not the minimum wage. The real issue is affordable Health Insurance. Hospital and Doctor bills are the leading cause for bankruptcy in this country. A full 46 million Americans have no basic Health Insurance. Half are women and children.
The USA ranks 37th. in quality of Health care. France is number one the UK, Italy and Spain are above the USA. WE spend on average $7000 a year. No other country spends near that much.
Now Republicans want more illegals not less and Bush supports amnesty. This is a effort by the Republicans to flood the labor market and lower the quality of living standards for all Americans. A wage of $10 per hour means nothing if you or your loved one is too sick to work and can not afford to go to a Doctor or Hospital. Lack of affordable Health Insurance is Americas greatest problem.
Reply:This is the only correct answer. No matter how much you make it is never enough, because you'll just keep spending more than you make!
Reply:I think a person's work ethic and ability to handle difficult tasks is what makes your wage go up.
for example, like McDonald's why would the company pay an employee loads of money when you can always hire someone (anyone) to do the job?
versus someone who has degrees AND work experience. that person would be paid more because of the difficulty of the job and the minimum training that would be required.
to be considered to earn a raised wage, or a high wage, you have to be competitive in the job field. You cannot expect to earn much of find a job if you are only good typing letters, when the job or many jobs require experience in other things such as computer software.
Reply:An education and job skills.
Reply:$75,000 if you want to save any money This due to the fact that our dollar has taken a hefty dive, the housing market has flattened, higher gas prices and growing inflation.
Reply:This question cannot be answered using the entire US. It costs, possibly, 10 times as much to live in NYC and California than in the southern mid-west. I have wondered why our government cannot see that a country wide minimum wage is absurd.
In the Ozarks (Missouri/Arkansas), $900.00 would cover necessities, provided the person is thrifty and realist about what and where they buy. That figure for persons in KC, St Louis, Little Rock...is too low. My guess is that it costs 50% more to live in the big cities of any state.
Reguardless, no person is worth more than he can or will produce. Business cannot pay according to the number of kids one has or the lifestyle they choose. Business must make a profit. Why stay in business just to break even and companies loosing money will close down. That means their employees are making nothing.
Reply:Depends entirely on the person. Some people are not worth more than minimum wage. Others are worth 100 an hour.
Reply:Depends on where in the country you live. $2400/month might keep you alive in Los Angeles... maybe.
Reply:It is none of my business, nor yours. You want to pay people more? Do so.
Have unskilled workers become so greedy that they wish to receive more than they produce?
Reply:Qualifications and good work habits for starters. There are so many mediocre workers out there that those who want to move up can do so if they're willing and able. That's where the good wages are. The menial jobs will never pay well because the American consumer doesn't want to support them through higher prices. That's why manufacturing jobs have gone overseas, not because the manufacturers are mean, but because most people want to be able to buy every new gadget that comes along - cheaply.
When you are willing to pay $60,000 for a Toyota Echo and $100 for a restaurant meal, those entry level wages will become living wages.
Reply:thats going to vary greatly according to where you live.
I dont think its jaded. The thing is a job that requires no skill and no education that anyone can do just often isnt worth the amount of money that in some places is a living wage.
If you want to live your going to have to get a skill/education.
I would say in my area the bare essentials maybe 8.5 - 9 dollars.. 18k a year or so could get you by. If you were really frugal about it maybe less.
But im guessing its more like 30k some places and maybe 14k somewhere else.
The generally its expensive on the coasts, and in high growth areas, and cheaper in the center of the country , as far as the USA goes.
Reply:That's impossible to ascertain in the U.S., since many people here feel that they must have at least two million dollars in savings plus a retirement income plus their home paid off plus their kids college paid for before they can, themselves, retire. So while they are "earning a living" they will do anything at any cost to themselves and their loved ones, and their friends and any body else to "earn" as much money as they can before they either die or are forced to retire.
Reply:I work for a non-profit. If it weren't for my husband's job which is for another non-profit(far wealthier than the one I work for) it would be a struggle. When we grocery shop we wonder how the average person with kids are making it. Both of us are educated. He carries 2 degress, I have 1. We are not corporate type people and if we must work we want to make a difference in our community. Ok sorry getting long winded. We live modestly and have a little bit for savings. We consider ourselves fortunate. I say 1,500 a month with no frills.
Reply:Minimum wage is a joke. Why do you think business is going to China?
Reply:Rent/mortgage $1000.00
Utilities $200.00
Car Payment $650.00
Insurance $90.00
Food $150.00
Gas $50.00 (depending on the vehicle)
Total +10% as a cushion = $2354.00/month
Under the above scenario and based on 160 hours every month means you would have to make $14.72 per hour. After taxes. So call it 20 bucks per hour if you live alone. But it depends on where you live too. I based it on where I live: Utah.
Reply:I can feel it already . The spawning of a new socialist !
Reply:if your a brain dead con who got some flake degree drinking your way through college, and now you cry about how hard you worked all your life, you deserve nothing.
......sorry
Reply:I think minimum wage should be at LEAST $8.50.
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