Minimum wage. Should it be $15?

[prerich]

 

You don't know Michigan do you.....

 

She was working 2 to 3 "low paying" jobs....Lets do the math here.  Michigan just recently became a right to work state, before then, almost all jobs were unionized. Everything had a union.  You do not maintain a home in Allen Park on welfare (unless you're getting over - we wondered how a kid I knew in elementary school's mother could afford a brand new custom red and white caddilac - sunroof, tire in the back, everything, and they were on free lunch and welfare).  Carson's not telling everything. - I don't know the whole truth, but the area - the time, and the money - doesn't add up.

His description of her jobs is that she worked as "a domestic". That likely means she was a housekeeper, babysitter, things like that, random jobs inside other people's houses. I guess I didn't realize that Detroit was so progressive that a single black mother could get not just one but three good paying union jobs at the same time, in 1959, in this line of work.

 

Point taken, but Allen Park???? If she said the east side in 1959...yes, but African American's over by Dearborn? Almost unheard of during that time.  During the riots - that side of town was protected and blocked off from the rest of Detroit by the National Guard. Something still doesn't smell right. My family was one of the first people of color in Rosedale Park and that was 1971!!! Allen Park?!!! Still doesn't jive. That's just me though. 

[WMcD]

It is a bit OT but.

I take a math class from time to time at Chicago's community college. I'm older than most of the professors.

This community college scheme is just magnificent in that it allows citizens to build college credit a very low cost.

So if the question is how the underclass can get above the minimum wage, the community colleges are part of the answer.

WMcD

Edited November 10, 2015 by William F. Gil McDermott

[Marvel]

I'm really laughing now!!!! In the 70's....that area was more "bourgeoisie" than Rosedale Park (were my family lived)!!!!! He was right next to Dearborn!!!! I think his ideal of what poor is might be warped - like the difference between Donald Trump broke and MC Hammer broke!!! LOL

Apparently not quite the ghetto, but, bourgeoisie? This was his house. He wrote in his book that he literally attempted to kill a friend over what music he was listening to. Sounds like they were living it up in a respectable suburb, no? At least at one point they were in public housing as far as I could tell. This was probably the best home he had after his parents divorced.

Believe it or not - due to redlining in Detroit - that was the "DREAM HOUSE". It's about the same size as the one my father had (our yard was just a little bigger). My father payed $160k for a house that size - our house was the smallest on the block. It also cost just as much as others. This is what happened in Detroit in the 60's and 70's. This is also a recent picture. I can tell by the neighborhood and the condition of Detroit in the 60's and 70's that this house was beautiful back then. For African Americans at that time....very mid to upper middle class.

Don't think with today's views....take yourself back into time and think. I doubt that the Carson's were Brewster/Dexter projects poor....that's what I call poor. I've been there and lived there.

When i was in 3rd grade our family moved from a small town in central Illinois (our small house was built in 1855), to Peoria Heights. We lived a house abouth that size until we built a new house of our own. My best friend grew up in a house this size, his parents had it built after they were married, after he got out of the USN at the end of WWII and stayed in it until the mid 70s.

Bruce

Edited November 10, 2015 by Marvel

[prerich]

It is a bit OT but.

I take a math class from time to time at Chicago's community college. I'm older than most of the professors.

This community college scheme is just magnificent in that it allows citizens to build college credit a very low cost.

So if the question is how the underclass can get above the minimum wage, the community colleges are part of the answer.

WMcD

I've learned something - in our changing world, many people can't get decent paying jobs even if they have degrees. The issue is that they stay in school, get the degree, and they have no experience.  The world is currently looking for plug-n-play personnel, people that have experience as well as education. The ironic thing is that the education doesn't have to mean a college degree.  Certifications with experience are valued more than a college degree with no experience (as I believe it should be - experience trumps a degree). 

 

I currently encourage military members who have technical skills to have those skills transferred into a civilian certification. This is one thing that the military doesn't tell you. I've received messages form military members that have done this telling me thanks for the information. Now they can make informed decisions on staying or leaving the military, and have the experience to jump directly into the civilian world (with the added benefit of Veteran's preference).

 

There are many vets making minimum wage because no one in the education and training department told them about this.  There are many things I didn't find out until I became the LPO of a training department. After I left the military, I told myself that I would insure that young enlisted service men and women that I encounter - learn about these hidden advantages that they have rightly earned.  Believe it or not, most military members that are at least an E-5 have the equivalent of an AA degree.

 

If you are military or prior military - don't get caught up in the high priced world of college education (until you have to).  Take CLEP/DANTES exams for free, even civilians can take them for $80 a pop, that's better than paying $300 a semester hour for things you already know.  Get your ACE transcript from you SMART profile, have it transferred to college credit, you'll be surprised at what you really know and what you're qualified for.

Edited November 10, 2015 by prerich

[Paducah Home Theater]

With respect to lost purchasing power, which side of the coin are you looking at?

Purchasing power can be defined as wages ÷ prices = purchase power. So, loss of power comes by lowering wages, or raising prices.

Wages are being lowered by off shoring skill jobs, leaving unskilled or lower skilled work as the only alternative. That's caused by our lopsided Trade Agreements.

It's not a business owners fault that somebody that he hired used to have a better position. The new boss doesn't owe the employee anything based on that. I don't agree with raising it because of this point you keep bringing up.

Purchasing power in the way I used it means cost of living. Groceries, gas, taxes, utilities, daycare, all vary greatly depending on where you live. This is why tech jobs are moving to the heartland. It's not that somebody wants to stay in their home town, it's that it's cheaper to do business there.

Edited November 10, 2015 by MetropolisLakeOutfitters

[prerich]

 

With respect to lost purchasing power, which side of the coin are you looking at?

Purchasing power can be defined as wages ÷ prices = purchase power. So, loss of power comes by lowering wages, or raising prices.

Wages are being lowered by off shoring skill jobs, leaving unskilled or lower skilled work as the only alternative. That's caused by our lopsided Trade Agreements.

It's not a business owners fault that somebody that he hired used to have a better position. The new boss doesn't owe the employee anything based on that. I don't agree with raising it because of this point you keep bringing up.

Purchasing power in the way I used it means cost of living. Groceries, gas, taxes, utilities, daycare, all vary greatly depending on where you live. This is why tech jobs are moving to the heartland. It's not that somebody wants to stay in their home town, it's that it's cheaper to do business there.

 

Well that's why many tech jobs that would pay $25/hr. are being out-sourced to India, or other overseas countries that will do the same work for $9/hr ...because at $9/hr. you could live like a king in some of these places. 

Management pays pennies on the dollar to employ someone cheaper and avoids other taxes and benefits, and someone else makes out and gets a living that wouldn't help in the States, but makes them upper middle class in other places. The only ones in the cold are the qualified people in the US. 

Edited November 10, 2015 by prerich

[Jim Naseum]

What kind of economy do you want to live in? 

 

My own preference is for a high wage, expanding middle class economy. You can not maintain a middle class (by anyone's definition) without high wages. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that high wages for working people are the foundation or meaning of middle class. If the middle is to mean anything, it must lie between two poles. On the bottom are subsistence workers who can exist only week to week on a wage that only provides the minimum for sustaining life. On the top are the wealthy who can be defined as having so much that luxury is an every day phenomenon. 

 

Economies don't just happen. They are designed. It's not an accident of nature that Germany has a high wage middle class economy (classic bell curve) and Mexico has a low wage feudal economy (hockey stick). People, events, powers drive the economy where they want it. The USA in my lifetime (post WWII) began with building a very successful middle class economy in the 1950s and 1960s, but then veered off radically in the direction of "Mexico." Gradually forcing down ward that middle class bubble in the middle of the bell curve, gradually flattening it into the elitist economies of the 3W. No, not there yet, but speeding down the highway full steam toward that goal. No accident was involved. Specific people drove a new direction and with enough time, the results followed.

 

Middle class should mean: ability to support a family with one income, ability to save for the future, access to health care that doesn't bankrupt the family, good housing, adequate food, access to education, and above all a semblance of security. Not luxurious, but secure. That's what occurred in the post WWII era. Blue collar skilled workers could enter the Middle Class. Not anymore. Now, to be Middle Class requires one to be a professional or quasi-professional (high technicians). Skilled labor jobs barely exist, having been replaced by either automation or offshoring.

 

The data doesn't lie. The bulk of our population is living well below middle class standards. Sure, you can say to yourself they all must be dumb, lazy, ignorant, immoral, slobs. But, you are talking about 85 million people! No sir, it's not a moral problem (in spite of the viscous circulating propaganda). It's an economic systems problem. Knobs and levers in the economic engine have been purposely, with great intent, turned this and that way, resulting in a different set of outcomes, which now wildly favor a few thousand people who had access to the knobs and levers, while seriously hurting the millions who didn't.

 

To restore the Gold Age of the American middle class, we need to get hands on to those very knobs and levers and turn them back to a better operation of the machinery of the economy. The Minimum Wage Lever, is nothing more than one of a couple dozen that needs adjustment.    

[Paducah Home Theater]

My own preference is for a high wage, expanding middle class economy. You can not maintain a middle class (by anyone's definition) without high wages.

Yes but which is higher, $50,000 a year in the rural heartland, or $105,000 a year in San Francisco?

You'd literally come out about even in this example. I think this situation is being overlooked.

[Jim Naseum]

"Fifty-one percent of working Americans now make less than $30,000 a year,  a new study by the Social Security Administration reported. Forty percent are making less than $20,000 a year. The federal government considers a family of four living on an income of less than $24,250 to be in poverty."

 

I think we better start with the obvious big problem before nit picking about the smaller ones, like where people live. These numbers are horrendous for anyone who thinks there is a middle class future in America. 

[Jeff Matthews]

"Fifty-one percent of working Americans now make less than $30,000 a year,  a new study by the Social Security Administration reported. Forty percent are making less than $20,000 a year. The federal government considers a family of four living on an income of less than $24,250 to be in poverty."

 

I think we better start with the obvious big problem before nit picking about the smaller ones, like where people live. These numbers are horrendous for anyone who thinks there is a middle class future in America. 

 

Here we go with the questionable quotes, again.

 

I could look to verify, but as usual, I'm too lazy, and it wouldn't matter much to me, anyway.  That said...

 

51% of working Americans now make less than $30,000/year.

 

Note:  "working Americans."  Not families.  Yet, the sentence regarding poverty pertains to a family of 4.  How many working Americans are in a family of 4?

 

Note:  "now" as in "now make less than $30,000."  You can use the word, "now," to describe what is occurring at the moment, but unless there is some possible ambiguity in the time-frame, its use would normally be surplusage.  However, there is no ambiguity.  Instead, what we have is a use of the word, "now," in a way intended to play a semantical trick, as in "It used to be great, but now it sucks."  I don't like the way the quoted sentence uses this word. It seems to reveal a bias.

 

Instead of mashing these non-equivalent measures together, what's the point the speaker is trying to make?  Is it the poverty rate for a family of four?  If so, why not just say, "The poverty rate for families of four is ______%?"  That would seem to do the trick.

 

Instead, we get pummeled with unrelated figures and fed bias through semantics.  We are fed mash in order to induce us to try to connect the figures together to present a picture which the speaker apparently thought could not be painted by using the proper statistics.

[Jim Naseum]

I'm too lazy, and it wouldn't matter much to me, anyway.

 

Well, I'm not so lazy I can't rearrange the quote into some bite sized statistics.

 

1. 51% of American workers make less than $30,000 a year.

2. 40% of American workers make less than $20,000 a year.

3. A family of four, making less than $24, 250 would be considered to be in poverty.

 

Ergo, half the workers in the USA make less than the proposed $15 minimum wage, and boosting them to that level would provide a massive increase in standard of living.  

[Arrow#422]

What kind of economy do you want to live in? 

 

My own preference is for a high wage, expanding middle class economy. You can not maintain a middle class (by anyone's definition) without high wages. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that high wages for working people are the foundation or meaning of middle class. If the middle is to mean anything, it must lie between two poles. On the bottom are subsistence workers who can exist only week to week on a wage that only provides the minimum for sustaining life. On the top are the wealthy who can be defined as having so much that luxury is an every day phenomenon. 

 

Middle class should mean: ability to support a family with one income, ability to save for the future, access to health care that doesn't bankrupt the family, good housing, adequate food, access to education, and above all a semblance of security. Not luxurious, but secure. That's what occurred in the post WWII era. Blue collar skilled workers could enter the Middle Class. Not anymore. Now, to be Middle Class requires one to be a professional or quasi-professional (high technicians). Skilled labor jobs barely exist, having been replaced by either automation or offshoring.

 

 

The jobs that once offered wage levels that provided economic comfort from a single worker within a family unit - are gone - for various reasons.  I can name numerous companies in my area that moved, folded, or were bought and stripped of the assets.  Some still operate but only as a shell of their once great stature.  With the increased need to now have 2 wage earners in a household, we now wonder why today's youth are running wild.  There is no time to properly raise the children.  This is another real product of the squeeze put on the middle class and the decreasing level of morality in our society.

The house shown in previous posts was a very fine home in the day.  With many wetting their beak in the fountain of prosperity during the last 3 economic expansions (early 90's, Y2K, and mid 2000's), there seems to be an underlying sense of entitlement, or at very least, a cry of FOUL for the current conditions after the '08 collapse.  It's difficult to let go of something once you've had it.

Education, and the promise of a better economic position that it will offer, is a joke.  A 4 year degree in my area will open the door to a whopping $30K per year.  Specialized disciplines, engineering or managerial type positions will get you $45-60K until you are either groomed within their system or prove yourself over time.  This realization hurts, but its quite laughable - if you can get over the initial pain to do so.  No degree, resume tossed in the trash.  Why, because employers have shifted the burden of training onto the worker, or even the government.  Is there any On the Job Training done anymore?  Not so much.  Many companies here have a revolving door at the HR level.  Wouldn't it be better to simply retain workers long term?  This stance is somewhat understandable with the last bubble burst and the roller coaster ride of trying to balance employment levels against sporadic incoming orders.  It also helps explain the increased use of temporary employment services as it allows employers to side step many expenses.

I'm doing OK, and I'm not moving to chase a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  The system is admittedly broken when there aren't enough (good paying) jobs for the willing and able workers.  Employers will push back using the term under (or over) qualified to justify exclusionary practices, but so many positions are posted with the intent of never even filling them.  

[RT FAN]

Done.

 

 I have to admit I glazed over on page 9 of this thread. One thing about CEO pay, if the stock has doubled during the CEO's tenure and your pension plan holds 500,000 shares, is the CEO worth what he got paid? In a society where movie stars get paid $20 million to work on a movie, how come it is difficult to justify a $10 million dollar payday for someone who increases the return on equity for MILLIONS of investors, through mutual funds, the pension plans of cops, firemen, teachers, civil servants, the AFL-CIO, etc, as well as keeping tens of thousands of people employed?

 

 Who really provides better value for the money?

[Jeff Matthews]

 

I'm too lazy, and it wouldn't matter much to me, anyway.

 

Well, I'm not so lazy I can't rearrange the quote into some bite sized statistics.

 

1. 51% of American workers make less than $30,000 a year.

2. 40% of American workers make less than $20,000 a year.

3. A family of four, making less than $24, 250 would be considered to be in poverty.

 

Ergo, half the workers in the USA make less than the proposed $15 minimum wage, and boosting them to that level would provide a massive increase in standard of living.  

 

 

Half make less than minimum wage?  Really?  How sure are you about that?  Is it because you read their annual (not hourly) earnings?

[Arrow#422]

Someone, anyone, please explain to me how America can realistically expect to rebuild the middle class, and the strength that a stable middle class brings, WITHOUT a return of manufacturing within our boarders.

[Jeff Matthews]

Bottom line:  If you think a person serving you is underpaid, you can tip them.  Be generous!  You don't need to wait for Congress.  Just go ahead and start tipping generously today.  Nobody is stopping you.  Tip your yard-man more.  Tip the garbage collector.  Tip the newspaper carrier.  It's all in your hands.

[Arrow#422]

Sounds much better than Big Brother "mandating" it into being.

[RT FAN]

Bottom line:  If you think a person serving you is underpaid, you can tip them.  Be generous!  You don't need to wait for Congress.  Just go ahead and start tipping generously today.  Nobody is stopping you.  Tip your yard-man more.  Tip the garbage collector.  Tip the newspaper carrier.  It's all in your hands.

 

 To quote Steve Martin as "Todd" in My Blue Heaven, 'I don't believe in tipping, I believe in over tipping. That's my philosophy."

 

 I will be laying out around $700 in various tips around Christmas time, and no, I won't be able to declare them on my taxes.

[T2K]

 

I'm too lazy, and it wouldn't matter much to me, anyway.

 

Well, I'm not so lazy I can't rearrange the quote into some bite sized statistics.

 

1. 51% of American workers make less than $30,000 a year.

2. 40% of American workers make less than $20,000 a year.

3. A family of four, making less than $24, 250 would be considered to be in poverty.

 

Ergo, half the workers in the USA make less than the proposed $15 minimum wage, and boosting them to that level would provide a massive increase in standard of living.  

 

 

How many workers are affected by a minimum wage?

 

Keith

[Paducah Home Theater]

Bottom line:  If you think a person serving you is underpaid, you can tip them.  Be generous!  You don't need to wait for Congress.  Just go ahead and start tipping generously today.  Nobody is stopping you.  Tip your yard-man more.  Tip the garbage collector.  Tip the newspaper carrier.  It's all in your hands.

 

I got a tip last night for selling a trailer.  Turned around and tipped my bank teller within the past hour.  You don't have to be a waitress to participate.