Lilsia
Registered
- Joined
- Feb 17, 2018
I'm curious the magic number everyone seems to think is the livable wage? Is it $20 an hour? What about a single mom of three who lives in New York City and works at Starbucks? Maybe we should say $40 to support her family. Maybe the government should analyze everyone's bills and pick a salary for each family.
How about maybe we take responsibility for our own lives - a novel concept that seems to have go by the wayside the past few years. If your area is too expensive for you to have everything you want working in a restaurant, maybe you should move to a different part of the country. If you think you can't live on $15 an hour working at a grocery store, how about getting training for a job that pays more? Or maybe work two jobs? Or maybe work hard, show up on time, stay off your cellphone and you may get promoted into management the way we used to do it in the "old days".
Though I guess it's just easier to say the government should pay everyone whatever they want to be paid, maybe all jobs should be paid equal - that would be fair - or maybe the government should just take over all corporations and we would be one perfect country.
I'm curious why immigrants want to move here if there is no opportunity to make a "living wage". Seems to me they would stay where they are if they weren't able to support their families here.
I don't think you see what is going on now. The pay used to be commensurate with cost of living. You made less, but things also costs much less. Housing, groceries, cars, etc where all much cheaper and everything was more in balance. If you made less money, you lived in an apartment(which was cheaper then buying a home), you got a cheaper car, you just had a more frugal life. The cost of living had jumped dramatically, but wages have not. The exact same apartment that I lived in 27 years ago that I could afford when I made minimum wage, is not affordable now for those with 1 income. Apartment prices have skyrocketed and now many are more expensive then my mortgage. That is out of balance. It is no longer a case of start at the bottom with a crap job and cheap apartment and work your way up. The bottom is so far down now that unless you have help, it is close to impossible. The government knows this. There is a reason why they changed the dependent age to 26. At 26, most of us were married with kids and living in our first home. So to some of you $15/ hour sounds like a lot. But what does it get you now? That is the question. My grandma said that she got paid 15 cents an hour, but their rent was $3 a month. It is all about balance and we are out of balance.