Can you maintain a decent living under current $7.25 per hour minimum wage?

1. 55

   Rashid G Khanposted 9 years ago

   Can you maintain a decent living under current $7.25 per hour minimum wage?
   
   There are many activist groups and labor unions in different states pressing for increase in the current minimum wage, while on the other hand, there are people like Donald Trump who don't seem to agree with the idea of revising minimum wage.
   
   Do you agree with the notion that it's not possible to maintain a healthy living earning current minimum wage?
   
   

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2. 84

   gmwilliamsposted 9 years ago

   
   
   Let me educate you.  People in the United States are paid according to their work experience, skill set, & educational level.  People in minimum wage skills typical have little work experience, low skill sets, & low to non-existent educational levels.   That is the name of the game.  The purpose of minimum wage jobs is to use that job as a stepping stone; it is never meant to be a long-term or lifetime occupation. 
   
   If people want more pay, they should have a higher skill set & education or attain it pure & simple.  Minimum wage is meant to be an incentive to do better, not to merely accept it & be satisfied.  That is poverty consciousness & thinking.  Also that is having a poverty & struggle mentality in addition to a mentality of lack.    There are people who have a mentality of lack & are satisfied w/very, very little. 
   
   Of course, no one can live decently on a minimum wage job.  To believe such would be illogical.  However, the PURPOSE of having a minimum wage job is to gain some type of experience or skills & MOVE UP or MOVE ON.  Minimum wage jobs were never meant to be lifetime employment.

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   1. 77

      Besarienposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Some people are not cut out to excel. If they work full time they still should make a living wage whether they pick up your garbage or flip your hamburger.

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3. 87

   lovemychrisposted 9 years ago

   Oh they need to revise it alright..
   Driving today I heard that much of Arizona has cut back to 4 school days a week...leaving parents to pay for daycare, when it should be a freebie! Know what the superintendent said? "How can you support 2016 level spending on 1986 revenue?" Same as wages. It's 2015 cost of living, and people earn 1970 wages. What another colossal scam! Take jobs away for profit, bust up unions, refuse to bring jobs back until you pay no taxes and minimal safety regulations. Meanwhile, people are starving, so they take whatever measly wage you offer. But who has been taking in money while this is going on? Top 1% and business CEO's. High theft. Highway robbery. Scammed, skimmed, and skewered!

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4. 80

   junksellerposted 9 years ago

   If Donald Trump was given $7.25 an hour to live off, he would starve to death in a week.
   
   Minimum wage puts a person right around $1200/month. That might break down to about $600 (rent/utilities), $150 (food), $150 (car/transportation), $150 (insurance/healthcare), and $150 (misc.) Even if you can manage that budget (which is tough), it doesn't leave anything for extras, savings, or emergencies. Whether that is a decent, healthy life or not I guess is open to opinion.
   
   And that is for a single person. For someone with a dependent, good luck. Minimum wage won't even cover childcare.

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5. 65

   RonElFranposted 9 years ago

   The idea that the minimum wage is just a stepping stone to better employment and was never meant for the long-term is simply historically incorrect.
   
   Franklin Roosevelt was the father of the minimum wage. In his 1937 message to Congress establishing both the minimum wage and a limit on weekly hours worked, FDR made it clear that the purpose of the law was to aid workers in their permanent occupations.
   
   Starting his speech by noting that "One-third of our population, the overwhelming majority of which is in agriculture or industry, is ill-nourished, ill-clad and ill-housed," Roosevelt went on to say:
   
   "Today, you and I are pledged to take further steps to reduce the lag in the purchasing power of industrial workers and to strengthen and stabilize the markets for the farmers' products... Our Nation so richly endowed with natural resources and with a capable and industrious population should be able to devise ways and means of insuring to all our able-bodied working men and women a fair day's pay for a fair day's work."
   
   Clearly FDR, the prime force behind the minimum wage, did not consider it to be a temporary expedient useful only as a spur to greater effort by people too lazy to educate themselves and get better jobs. It was intended from the beginning, and ever since, to be a means of raising the purchasing power of workers who were not receiving what FDR called a "living wage."
   
   The idea that a minimum wage would wreck the economy was strenuously argued by the law's opponents from the very beginning. But their predictions of doom never came true. With the minimum wage in place, the purchasing power of workers increased, and, as FDR intended and predicted, unleashed a far greater level of economic activity than the economy could have otherwise experienced.
   
   It can hardly be argued that the millions of workers today who receive the minimum wage have a "living wage." FDR's purpose for the minimum wage is as valid today as in 1938 when the law went into effect.
   
   History is clearly on the side of raising the minimum to something workers can live on.

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6. 50

   bradmasterOCcalposted 9 years ago

   That is an interesting question because that is the average SS benefit.

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7. 57

   AdamV123posted 9 years ago

   Many people on minimum wage have to go on welfare in order to make the kind of money they need to survive. So either raise the minimum wage or go deeper into debt supporting a greater amount of people on welfare.

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