How do people survive on minimum wage?

[buckeye45_73]

Speaking of minimum wage, can we not have liberal corporate executives berating min wage workers because not everyone is a member of the Gaystopo?

 

[Gadawg73]

There are only so many hours in the day...how much time do you think one should have to work in order to survive????

As many hours as it takes.

When I went back to college after the first time I worked 40 hours a week at one job, 12 hours a week at another part time job that paid the MW and another 12 hours a week mowing yards, cleaning gutters and other odd jobs.
64 hours a week
And I went to college on top of that!
You do what you have to do. I made it and it made me value a dollar and value working to get ahead.
Go to work, work 2 jobs or maybe 3 like I did.
Or bitch and moan and make demands that you are owed something.

sure you did, and my father walked 5 miles to a from school every day of the week, on one leg, with his arm tied behind his back, in 10 feet of snow...

40 hours a week at a law firm running errands 3 years before I got my detective license.
12 hours a week at the old Muses men's store in Lenox Square in Atlanta. 3 hours on Monday night 6-9:30 pm, 3 hours on Friday night and 6 hours Saturday 3:30 to 9:30.
Bought my first house in 1979 and mowed yards in the neighborhood, cleaned gutters, etc. Saturday morning and Sunday afternoons. Spent many a long night in the Ga. State library working on my graduate degree in between.
Something about providing and not being a whiny ass cry baby.
You are just envious and jealous. The moocher class has those tendencies.
As a result of that I now have over 2 mil from that work ethic and I have never made over 100K in a year ever.

 

[Gadawg73]

And I have also put 3 kids through college and it was not that hard for them. They also worked jobs and all I had to pay was 1/3 of all the costs.
Something about being a role model for your children, a trait not know to the moocher class.

 

[Gadawg73]

There are only so many hours in the day...how much time do you think one should have to work in order to survive????

As many hours as it takes.

When I went back to college after the first time I worked 40 hours a week at one job, 12 hours a week at another part time job that paid the MW and another 12 hours a week mowing yards, cleaning gutters and other odd jobs.
64 hours a week
And I went to college on top of that!
You do what you have to do. I made it and it made me value a dollar and value working to get ahead.
Go to work, work 2 jobs or maybe 3 like I did.
Or bitch and moan and make demands that you are owed something.

When you worked that 40 hour mw job, your pay was 1/3 more than a mw worker gets today, when adjusted for inflation. Do you think you could have made it if your paid paid 1/3 less?? What would you have done?

I made $2.90 in 1979 MW which is equivalent to $6.27 an hour now.
How is that 1/3 less?

 

[Dick Tuck]

MW workers get food stamps. $625 a month for a family of 5.
They are eating T bone steak and shrimp cocktail.
Where the hell have you folks been?

Hmmm 5 people x 30 days (I'm being conservative) x 3 meals a day comes out to $1.39 a meal. Yeah, T bones and shrimp on that kind of budget. Are you insane? More like ground meat once a week, lots of pasta, rice, beans, etc..

What? They sell their food stamps for 60 cents on the dollar and eat the T bones and shrimp for a week and then are out of money.
They go to the food bank and Must Ministries to get their other food.
The kids go hungry. Are you so naive and gullible to believe that giving irresponsible people that have children that they can not even feed will be responsible to get food from a food stamp card?
Most folks on food stamps hate their own kids. If they loved them they would work 3 jobs 64 hours a week like I did for 4 years straight PLUS WENT TO COLLEGE.

So they take a loss on the $1.39 a meal, and wind up eating Tbones and shrimp?

I think you're a piece of human garbage, racist pig. I could be wrong. Do some homework. Go to Walmart on the first of the month and midnight. You'll find a crowded store, and carts filled with loaves of crappy white bread, cheap bologna, cheap hot dogs, etc.

I still don't believe you're an honest caring person, but the fact remains that you made the claim that people are eating like kings on foodstamps, in spite of the simple math showing that your claim breaks down to $1.39 a meal, on those 30 months.

 

[Againsheila]

As many hours as it takes.

When I went back to college after the first time I worked 40 hours a week at one job, 12 hours a week at another part time job that paid the MW and another 12 hours a week mowing yards, cleaning gutters and other odd jobs.
64 hours a week
And I went to college on top of that!
You do what you have to do. I made it and it made me value a dollar and value working to get ahead.
Go to work, work 2 jobs or maybe 3 like I did.
Or bitch and moan and make demands that you are owed something.

When you worked that 40 hour mw job, your pay was 1/3 more than a mw worker gets today, when adjusted for inflation. Do you think you could have made it if your paid paid 1/3 less?? What would you have done?

I made $2.90 in 1979 MW which is equivalent to $6.27 an hour now.
How is that 1/3 less?

Federal Minimum Wage Rates, 1955

 

[tjvh]

Only a complete fucking idiot without any work ethics at all would worry about how to eek out a meager living on Minimum wage. It's a stepping stone job to something better idiots... Not a career choice.

 

[buckeye45_73]

Hmmm 5 people x 30 days (I'm being conservative) x 3 meals a day comes out to $1.39 a meal. Yeah, T bones and shrimp on that kind of budget. Are you insane? More like ground meat once a week, lots of pasta, rice, beans, etc..

What? They sell their food stamps for 60 cents on the dollar and eat the T bones and shrimp for a week and then are out of money.
They go to the food bank and Must Ministries to get their other food.
The kids go hungry. Are you so naive and gullible to believe that giving irresponsible people that have children that they can not even feed will be responsible to get food from a food stamp card?
Most folks on food stamps hate their own kids. If they loved them they would work 3 jobs 64 hours a week like I did for 4 years straight PLUS WENT TO COLLEGE.

So they take a loss on the $1.39 a meal, and wind up eating Tbones and shrimp?

I think you're a piece of human garbage, racist pig. I could be wrong. Do some homework. Go to Walmart on the first of the month and midnight. You'll find a crowded store, and carts filled with loaves of crappy white bread, cheap bologna, cheap hot dogs, etc.

I still don't believe you're an honest caring person, but the fact remains that you made the claim that people are eating like kings on foodstamps, in spite of the simple math showing that your claim breaks down to $1.39 a meal, on those 30 months.

Where the hell do you live? Sure there are those that do that, there are also others that scam the system.....come to Memphis, you'll find quite a few of both......

 

[Againsheila]

Only a complete fucking idiot without any work ethics at all would worry about how to eek out a meager living on Minimum wage. It's a stepping stone job to something better idiots... Not a career choice.

There are a lot of people working mw jobs that have no choice...

 

[Clementine]

They don't, they can't, I've been saying that for years, more than 75% of those working for minimum wage are adults and minimum wage currently has the lowest spending power in history. In the richest country in the world, the poorest worker should make a living wage.

My aunt worked her entire adult life at the same job. She started as a lowly teller in the bank and worked her way up. She ended up with better than minimum wage because she had some education and skills and was willing to keep learning. Even after 50+ years of working and paying into social security, she received a little over $700 a month from social security. She died and never came close to getting back what she paid in to social security. She was smart enough to plan for her retirement. She knew government wasn't the answer. She was.

If a person has a bunch of children and a minimum wage job, what went wrong? Did someone make them have more children than they could afford? Did someone prevent them from finishing school or even going to trade school or college on government subsidized loans? Why do some end up with better paying jobs and others never make it out of the gate? Do individuals have any control over their lives or their choices?

If we keep increasing minimum wage, prices go up and jobs decrease. Perhaps those making minimum wage now could make ends meet if the economy didn't suck and prices weren't steadily rising all the time. Minimum wage jobs were generally meant for those starting into the work force, not permanent situations. If all menial job employers had to pay wages that ensured a person could care for a whole family, prices would be through the roof and then the minimum wage earners would still suffer because they still couldn't afford much.

Now that employers will be forced to offer health insurance to part time workers, don't expect them to offer more jobs.

We're going backwards here because the government is forever trying to pick up the slack for people who made bad decisions and it's making things worse. People need to take some responsibility. Learn from mistakes and make better choices. The rule used to be that people who quit school or made other dumb decisions would pay for it with a lesser standard of living. Now that government always promises to subsidize them, they are better off with their unskilled labor jobs.

While the author of this assumes that they are forced to live on their minimum wage paycheck, that is not a true picture. The more children, the more welfare. With a minimum wage job and children, some actually end up with more disposable income than many middle class people. Sucks to have to pay all your bills yourself, doesn't it.

Government needs to stop trying to ensure equal outcomes for people regardless of the effort the people put in. It just keeps screwing things up worse.

 

[thereisnospoon]

There are only so many hours in the day...how much time do you think one should have to work in order to survive????

As many hours as it takes.

When I went back to college after the first time I worked 40 hours a week at one job, 12 hours a week at another part time job that paid the MW and another 12 hours a week mowing yards, cleaning gutters and other odd jobs.
64 hours a week
And I went to college on top of that!
You do what you have to do. I made it and it made me value a dollar and value working to get ahead.
Go to work, work 2 jobs or maybe 3 like I did.
Or bitch and moan and make demands that you are owed something.

When you worked that 40 hour mw job, your pay was 1/3 more than a mw worker gets today, when adjusted for inflation. Do you think you could have made it if your paid paid 1/3 less?? What would you have done?

work twice as many hours. One does what they must to earn their degree and some spending money along the way.
Stop whining.

 

[thereisnospoon]

As many hours as it takes.

When I went back to college after the first time I worked 40 hours a week at one job, 12 hours a week at another part time job that paid the MW and another 12 hours a week mowing yards, cleaning gutters and other odd jobs.
64 hours a week
And I went to college on top of that!
You do what you have to do. I made it and it made me value a dollar and value working to get ahead.
Go to work, work 2 jobs or maybe 3 like I did.
Or bitch and moan and make demands that you are owed something.

sure you did, and my father walked 5 miles to a from school every day of the week, on one leg, with his arm tied behind his back, in 10 feet of snow...

40 hours a week at a law firm running errands 3 years before I got my detective license.
12 hours a week at the old Muses men's store in Lenox Square in Atlanta. 3 hours on Monday night 6-9:30 pm, 3 hours on Friday night and 6 hours Saturday 3:30 to 9:30.
Bought my first house in 1979 and mowed yards in the neighborhood, cleaned gutters, etc. Saturday morning and Sunday afternoons. Spent many a long night in the Ga. State library working on my graduate degree in between.
Something about providing and not being a whiny ass cry baby.
You are just envious and jealous. The moocher class has those tendencies.
As a result of that I now have over 2 mil from that work ethic and I have never made over 100K in a year ever.

Those on the left will cry out" Oh but you had so many advantages"...

 

[thereisnospoon]

Hmmm 5 people x 30 days (I'm being conservative) x 3 meals a day comes out to $1.39 a meal. Yeah, T bones and shrimp on that kind of budget. Are you insane? More like ground meat once a week, lots of pasta, rice, beans, etc..

What? They sell their food stamps for 60 cents on the dollar and eat the T bones and shrimp for a week and then are out of money.
They go to the food bank and Must Ministries to get their other food.
The kids go hungry. Are you so naive and gullible to believe that giving irresponsible people that have children that they can not even feed will be responsible to get food from a food stamp card?
Most folks on food stamps hate their own kids. If they loved them they would work 3 jobs 64 hours a week like I did for 4 years straight PLUS WENT TO COLLEGE.

So they take a loss on the $1.39 a meal, and wind up eating Tbones and shrimp?

I think you're a piece of human garbage, racist pig. I could be wrong. Do some homework. Go to Walmart on the first of the month and midnight. You'll find a crowded store, and carts filled with loaves of crappy white bread, cheap bologna, cheap hot dogs, etc.

I still don't believe you're an honest caring person, but the fact remains that you made the claim that people are eating like kings on foodstamps, in spite of the simple math showing that your claim breaks down to $1.39 a meal, on those 30 months.

Bullshit....I have seen people filling up shopping carts with all kinds of food, handing over food coupons then getting into cars I cannot afford to buy...
\The whole social entitlement system in this country is over run with fraud.

 

[thereisnospoon]

Only a complete fucking idiot without any work ethics at all would worry about how to eek out a meager living on Minimum wage. It's a stepping stone job to something better idiots... Not a career choice.

There are a lot of people working mw jobs that have no choice...

Unless the US Legalized slavery or indentured servitude, EVERYONE has choices.

 

[thereisnospoon]

No country can long survive with the majority of it's wealth in the hands of a few. Of course it's a crisis.

I know mw workers that are living in tent cities.....

minimum wage has absolutely ZERO to do with this issue.
And there you go again spouting off undocumented statements.
We deal in verifiable facts only.
This is a crisis YOUR SIDE has created for strictly political purposes.
It won't work.

Gee, will FAUX NEWS do?
Economic Woes Lead to Proliferation of Tent Cities Nationwide | Fox News

maybe:

http://boingboing.net/2012/02/13/americas-tent-cities.html

or from 2008:

http://boingboing.net/2012/02/13/americas-tent-cities.html

Caught by surprise
The phenomenon of encampments has caught advocacy groups somewhat by surprise, largely because of how quickly they have sprung up.
Advertise | AdChoices

"What you're seeing is encampments that I haven't seen since the 80s," said Paul Boden, executive director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project, an umbrella group for homeless advocacy organizations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Calif., Portland, Ore. and Seattle.

The relatively tony city of Santa Barbara has given over a parking lot to people who sleep in cars and vans.

The city of Fresno, Calif., is trying to manage several proliferating tent cities, including an encampment where people have made shelters out of scrap wood.

In Portland, Ore., and Seattle, homeless advocacy groups have paired with nonprofits or faith-based groups to manage tent cities as outdoor shelters.

Other cities where tent cities have either appeared or expanded include include Chattanooga, Tenn., San Diego, and Columbus, Ohio.

You're not merely an asshole, thereisnospoon, you're part of the campaign to see that people who were put into the position they're in blame themselves, and are in turn blamed by everyone else for the malfeasance of the ones who gambled their well being at the finance casino for a pocket full of promises called debt trading. Honestly, you suck.

Anyone who refuses to make an attempt to reach their full potential has no one to blame but themselves.
As far as the rest of your angry lib post, I will not dignify emotional rants with a response.

 

[Care4all]

As many hours as it takes.

When I went back to college after the first time I worked 40 hours a week at one job, 12 hours a week at another part time job that paid the MW and another 12 hours a week mowing yards, cleaning gutters and other odd jobs.
64 hours a week
And I went to college on top of that!
You do what you have to do. I made it and it made me value a dollar and value working to get ahead.
Go to work, work 2 jobs or maybe 3 like I did.
Or bitch and moan and make demands that you are owed something.

sure you did, and my father walked 5 miles to a from school every day of the week, on one leg, with his arm tied behind his back, in 10 feet of snow...

40 hours a week at a law firm running errands 3 years before I got my detective license.
12 hours a week at the old Muses men's store in Lenox Square in Atlanta. 3 hours on Monday night 6-9:30 pm, 3 hours on Friday night and 6 hours Saturday 3:30 to 9:30.
Bought my first house in 1979 and mowed yards in the neighborhood, cleaned gutters, etc. Saturday morning and Sunday afternoons. Spent many a long night in the Ga. State library working on my graduate degree in between.
Something about providing and not being a whiny ass cry baby.
You are just envious and jealous. The moocher class has those tendencies.
As a result of that I now have over 2 mil from that work ethic and I have never made over 100K in a year ever.

we paid cash for our home here in Maine and own our house outright, we own our cars outright, we have no credit card debt, and I don't have to work anymore to survive or make it...I think I know ALL ABOUT personal responsibility and have done quite well with it, thank you very much...

I have nothing to be jealous of my dear...

edit
also, I began working during high school at 15 years old and thru college years too, and if you count Baby sitting I started working at 10 years old.

I still made 30% more making minimum wage, than the youngsters of today making minimum wage....thus, I had a better chance of being able to pay for my college than these youngsters today.....

 

[Care4all]

keeping minimum wages down, just puts more people on the government dole....

 

[Againsheila]

They don't, they can't, I've been saying that for years, more than 75% of those working for minimum wage are adults and minimum wage currently has the lowest spending power in history. In the richest country in the world, the poorest worker should make a living wage.

My aunt worked her entire adult life at the same job. She started as a lowly teller in the bank and worked her way up. She ended up with better than minimum wage because she had some education and skills and was willing to keep learning. Even after 50+ years of working and paying into social security, she received a little over $700 a month from social security. She died and never came close to getting back what she paid in to social security. She was smart enough to plan for her retirement. She knew government wasn't the answer. She was.

If a person has a bunch of children and a minimum wage job, what went wrong? Did someone make them have more children than they could afford? Did someone prevent them from finishing school or even going to trade school or college on government subsidized loans? Why do some end up with better paying jobs and others never make it out of the gate? Do individuals have any control over their lives or their choices?

If we keep increasing minimum wage, prices go up and jobs decrease. Perhaps those making minimum wage now could make ends meet if the economy didn't suck and prices weren't steadily rising all the time. Minimum wage jobs were generally meant for those starting into the work force, not permanent situations. If all menial job employers had to pay wages that ensured a person could care for a whole family, prices would be through the roof and then the minimum wage earners would still suffer because they still couldn't afford much.

Now that employers will be forced to offer health insurance to part time workers, don't expect them to offer more jobs.

We're going backwards here because the government is forever trying to pick up the slack for people who made bad decisions and it's making things worse. People need to take some responsibility. Learn from mistakes and make better choices. The rule used to be that people who quit school or made other dumb decisions would pay for it with a lesser standard of living. Now that government always promises to subsidize them, they are better off with their unskilled labor jobs.

While the author of this assumes that they are forced to live on their minimum wage paycheck, that is not a true picture. The more children, the more welfare. With a minimum wage job and children, some actually end up with more disposable income than many middle class people. Sucks to have to pay all your bills yourself, doesn't it.

Government needs to stop trying to ensure equal outcomes for people regardless of the effort the people put in. It just keeps screwing things up worse.

I have a friend that's been working as a maid for over 30 years...she's not making much more than minimum wage. She's had to change companies several times. Everytime the Hispanics come in and get in power, they take care of their own and when hours are cut, its the whites whose hours are cut, not the Hispanics. One job she'd had for 10 years cut her down to less than 20 hours a week, she couldn't live on that. Now she's working for a better company and hopefully she will do better. She has an education but she also had Tourettes syndrome which believe it or not, has limited her job choices. As far as you are concerned she deserves her lot in life even those she's worked hard all her life and tried to make the right choices. She's not married, never had kids and can't even support herself on her salary. At 55 years old, she's had to move back in with her mother to make ends meet. yeah, good job not raising the mw to a living wage...that's the right thing to do to keep good honest hardworking people as down as you can.

 

[Againsheila]

Only a complete fucking idiot without any work ethics at all would worry about how to eek out a meager living on Minimum wage. It's a stepping stone job to something better idiots... Not a career choice.

There are a lot of people working mw jobs that have no choice...

Unless the US Legalized slavery or indentured servitude, EVERYONE has choices.

Yeah, work the mw job for the slave owners or die. Good choices.

 

[Againsheila]

What? They sell their food stamps for 60 cents on the dollar and eat the T bones and shrimp for a week and then are out of money.
They go to the food bank and Must Ministries to get their other food.
The kids go hungry. Are you so naive and gullible to believe that giving irresponsible people that have children that they can not even feed will be responsible to get food from a food stamp card?
Most folks on food stamps hate their own kids. If they loved them they would work 3 jobs 64 hours a week like I did for 4 years straight PLUS WENT TO COLLEGE.

So they take a loss on the $1.39 a meal, and wind up eating Tbones and shrimp?

I think you're a piece of human garbage, racist pig. I could be wrong. Do some homework. Go to Walmart on the first of the month and midnight. You'll find a crowded store, and carts filled with loaves of crappy white bread, cheap bologna, cheap hot dogs, etc.

I still don't believe you're an honest caring person, but the fact remains that you made the claim that people are eating like kings on foodstamps, in spite of the simple math showing that your claim breaks down to $1.39 a meal, on those 30 months.

Bullshit....I have seen people filling up shopping carts with all kinds of food, handing over food coupons then getting into cars I cannot afford to buy...
\The whole social entitlement system in this country is over run with fraud.

There are people who abuse the system. I have no problems with ending the abuse.