If you work for $10 per hour, and you manage to get in 10 hours a day,
and a full 5 days per week for 52 weeks, you will earn a whopping
$26,000.
Working a 40 hour week at $15 per hour for a full 52 weeks will bring
you about $31,200. To make over $40,000 per year you will need to
get 52 weeks of 40 hours each, with an hourly wage of $20. This
brings in $41,600
And that is before any taxes or medical or FICA. You can count on at
least $10,000 coming off the top for taxes, Medical, and other fees.
Now you have close to $31,000 to cover house or apartment, utilities,
food and incidental expenses,transportation expenses, clothing, and on
and on. You can plug in the numbers for you and your family, but
$41,600 a year is not going to enable you to save enough to pull your
family out of danger of the poverty line.
This afternoon my wife's family gathered at our house to celebrate her
mother's 91st birthday. My brother-in-law, a 67 year old Vite Nam
Marine veteran, said to me, "These people wanting $15 per hour for
entry level jobs are not doing work that is worth that much".
I said, "Look at it from the other side. The level of income in order
to live at or just above the poverty line is actually closer to $20
per hour. You were not responsible for a rising cost of living that
requires $20 per hour to survive. Your employer is not satisfied in
running a business that allows him to live at the poverty line, so why
should he expect you to be satisfied with it?"
Sure, the boss will need to adjust his prices a few pennies on the
dollar, but so will all the other businesses in town. Why should we
expect that you should sacrifice any bit of this bare bones living in
order to assist your boss in living a life style you will never
attain?" My brother-in-law made one more try at convincing me that
some jobs are just not worth such an amount of money. "Flipping a
hamburger doesn't take any real skill", he argued.
"But flipping hundreds of hamburgers each day, day after day, as well
as keeping current on sanitation regulations, and all of the other
foods you must prepare and serve is worth a decent living, if it is
important enough for the business to provide a service to the
community".
We left it at that and went on to other topics. I doubt I convinced
him, and for certain he didn't sway my belief. But we like each other
and we both understand that our fighting over the minimum wage will
not change anything, but it could prove harmful to our family
relations.
Besides, I know that I'm right!!!
Carl Jarvis
On 7/17/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I just heard an item on the WBAI Pacifica news. The Homeless have been
demonstrating because new low cost housing is being made available to the
poor. The housing is for families with incomes as low as $40,000 or
$45,000.
The problem is that many working people in the city don't make $40,000.
Their incomes are $30,000. There is no affordable housing for them.
Shelters
exist and a great deal of money is spent for them. But there's no permanent
housing The demonstrators were marching in front of an empty lot, owned by
the city, that had been just sitting there for 47 years. They would like
the
city to build housing on this property in which they could afford to live.
Miriam