Quote:
Originally Posted by stekim";p="
What you are failing to understand is that increasing the minimum wage won't help the poor. I know it seems counter-intuitive, but LOTS of things in economics are. If it were that easy, why not make the minimum wage $50,000 a year? Any thoughts on what might happen?
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Do you realize that the minimum wage hasn't gone up since the mid-late 90's? Yet at most other jobs, you usually get a raise of around 3-3.5% each year? Why is it that the rest of us deserve the benefit of staying ahead of inflation, whereas these people making minimum wage are not allowed. It's always such a huge deal when anyone says they should be making more to support their families.
I understand that you can't simply raise minimum wage to whatever you want, but it should go up steadily with inflation. The cost of living has skyrocketed in the last decade, yet minimum wage has remained stagnent. This is outrageous to expect people to try to survive on. How can you say it won't help them to be making more money to cover the costs of increasing prices.
Have you ever heard of a show called "30 Days", its made by the guy who made that movie SuperSize Me. In this show, he and his wife lived for 30 days on minimum wage jobs. If you had watched that show, you would see that it is extremely hard to live off of that kind of dough. On top of that, but you don't have health insurance to cover the cost of illness and/or injury.
A whlie back, my girlfriend and I lived for about 2 years on minimum wage. No kids, no car payment, no mortgage, just rent/utilities/food/etc. And still we were barely making it, in fact several times, we had to borrow money from my parents to make ends meet some months. Some people can't go to their family for help. Many have families, many have car payments, mortgages, etc. And I can't imagine how this is like to live. No savings, no retirement fund, no college fund for your kids, nothing, paycheck to paycheck. And costs keep going up year after year. Many can't afford to drive to their job anymore with the cost of gas. Many can't afford to heat their homes this winter. Many can't even afford to have their kids go to school, because they need them to get jobs to help out the family. Oh yes, it happens.
Increasing minimum wage should go up each year, just like any other job, if we are all expected to keep up with inflation. Otherwise they will all get left behind...decide it's not worth their time to work, and either steal it, or take it from government programs like welfare. They will be forced to abuse the system like so many others. Rewarding them for getting out there and working for their money is the only way to actually keep them there. But whatever....keep up the hate.