We decided years ago with the labor laws, that 40 hours a week (8 hours a day) of labor put into society, was the maximum amount of work any one adult should need to contribute in order to survive. With that in mind, the question of rather that contribution (no matter what it is) is worth a living wage makes no sense. The whole premise of society and monetary currency is that ‘one trades labor for money to obtain food, shelter, and so on’. Maximum labor put in, is equal to or greater than that of the minimum living wage requirements, in any given society by it’s own set standards of the maximums and minimums there in.
The federal minimum wage is currently $7.25 an hour (set in 2009). The average living wage in the US is $15 an hour, for two working adults with one child. Though, only 10 states’ average living wage is $15 an hour or less (Arkansas being the lowest at around $13). 24 states need $15.01 – $19.99 to meet their living wage requirements, 14 need $20.00 – $29.99, and 2 need over $30 an hour to meet the living wage average (California at about $30, and Hawaii at about $35).
At minimum wage pay, two adults would need to work 80 hours a week, each, to survive and support one child at the living wage standard. Twice the maximum labor supply society requires in trade for the minimum living standards, does not add up. The current national poverty line for a family with two adults and one child is $20,420 a year, which breaks down to $9.81 an hour at 40 hours a week. Even at $32,402 a year ($15.57 an hour/40 hours a week), this same family still qualifies for Medicaid.
Living wage means the minimum one needs to survive, so food, shelter, medication, clothing, the basics. Living wage simply means the least amount of money needed to meet ones basic needs within a given society. But, with the minimum wage set at less than half of the living wage, many people are working multiple jobs, just to afford being able to choose between medications and food.
According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics 2013 ‘Consumer Expenditure Survey’, this is the hourly wage break down to cover the average living costs:
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$4.84 Housing ($774 a month — currently about $1000 and rising)
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$3.57 Taxes
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$3.39 Utilities/Household Operational Costs
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$3.17 Food ($517 a month – the current government standard for thrifty, the lowest standard)
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$2.65 Social Security
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$1.74 Healthcare ($279 a month — currently over $700 a month for a family plan, not counting co-pays, just the coverage)
$19.36 ah hour for 2013 averages.
This leaves out items like transportation, which came in at $4.32 an hour ($691 a month). Or, clothing, education, personal care, debts, and entertainment which racked up another $5.36 an hour, all together. And, that still leaves out things like vices, miscellaneous, and cash contributions, which would account for another $1.57 an hour according to the study. So all together we should be making $30.61 an hour, to live the ‘average life’ in 2013… Anyone need to factor a student loan into that?
But somehow the corporation’s (whose CEO’s are making more in an hour what their employees make per year and are passing out bonuses like candy) can’t afford to pay the labor that supports them a living wage. Somehow, it will ruin the company, and no one will have a job, to pay workers a living wage. If a business can not afford to pay its workers a living wage in exchange for their labor, they can not afford to be in business, no one is entitled to own a business. However, according to our labor laws, if you put in 40 hours of work a week, you are entitled to pay for the basic living standards; not in need of finding another 40 hours of work in addition, that still may not cover your needs.
Greed has set in, and twisted the logic, that it is okay to pay below the poverty wage level. People buy into it, and defend the greed, asking why not find another job? Strike? When you’re working 60+ hours a week and still not making ends meet, you can’t afford to call in sick, let alone risk losing one of the jobs you have. When it’s legal to pay slave wages, most will, so job hopping does no good and there’s always someone waiting to pick up your hours if you go from one.
That job wasn’t meant to support a family! Why not? Because it’s food service, Janitorial, something else you look down on? In this country, with more prisoners than the rest of the world, where do you think felons can work after they have paid their debts to society and are re-entering it? Almost no one will hire them, they can’t vote anymore to advocate for themselves, so screw them and their family for wanting to survive after a mistake? Because anyone is so perfect? Because preach forgiveness and generosity, but scoff at those in need, lowering your property values?
And let’s not forget those who simply do not have the ability or opportunity, for many other reasons, to work a station ‘more to your approving’. Screw them paying rent and eating at the same time? The countries with American fast food chains in them, and living wage laws, only charge a few more cents for the burgers there. It did not destroy the business, it is profiting in other countries, just much more in ours. Yet, we blame our coworkers over the companies; they’re lazy rather than they’re greedy. The reason those jobs are seen as pocket change jobs when worked by teenagers, is supposed to be because they are worked part-time (20 hours or fewer per week), it’s not supposed to be twisted into justification to pay poverty level wages for the positions.
You want burger flippers to make as much as paramedics?!… No, give the paramedics a raise that appropriately reflects their worth above the minimum living standards. And so on and so forth, with all. You want to know why chain businesses are dying? No generation is killing them; people can’t afford to spend their money on such things. When you don’t make enough to cover even shelter, food, and healthcare in full, you can’t afford to stimulate the economy too.
We see one time bonus of a couple hundred dollars, as proof of trickle down, when that would actually be permanent raises instead. We see temporary tax benefits for citizens and permanent tax benefits to companies as a win, because instant gratification feels better than long term planning? Speaking of long term, it’s been 4 decades, that original Regan trickle down should be kicking in any minute now, right? And trying to reboot it again totally won’t cause another recession, crash, or any of the other things that happen every time people tried… Right? The growing mass of struggling Americans, just aren’t trying hard enough. They need to stop getting that ‘whatever treat’ they spend $10 on each payday, just trying to get some joy from their efforts. That is absolutely what’s breaking the bank, that $120 a year would totally solve all their problems… Really. Not the minimum wage being legally set to a living wage.
We keep electing people who profit off of keeping it legal to harm us. We keep buying into the spin, that those working three jobs over 60+ hours a week, are just somehow not trying hard enough. They are literally working harder, than we agreed as a society anyone should, just to barely survive. Yet here we are, still arguing their worth, in favor of a handful of people atop companies drowning in profits. Our morals are skewed, or at least the results of our actions make it seem so.
Between letting corporations lobby to keep wages at poverty levels, in trade for profit holders bank accounts. By letting big pharma lobby to keep us off universal healthcare, and allowed to rack up prices to an obscenely illegal standard almost anywhere else. By allowing the privatization of the criminal justice system, making recidivism and mandatory sentencing profitable, and turning the prisons into for-profit labor camps (that take jobs from society). By clinging to the horse and buggy of coal and oil for their lobbying that it’s not economic, when overall it is cheaper, creates sustainable jobs, and the longer we wait the farther behind the rest of the world we fall… Not to mention how we only have one planet to live on and you can’t eat, drink, or breath money.
For all the pockets we watch lined to our own detriment, while reelecting those who enable it. For all the lies we believe without even so much as Googling the topic… Perhaps we deserve what we get. We don’t seem too rushed to fix it, or to hear the facts, or to really do much of anything but wait on someone else to sort it. We’re so ready to crush each other down, to push the 1% higher, buying their trickle down fairy tales while watching their personal worth explode as the gap gets bigger. Watching the bottom half of the ladder to success, that the American dream (right to pursue life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness) is supposed to grant access to, be severed trapping those born below a certain income line, to make the rich even richer. Ever waiting. Starving. Forgetting which side has the numbers, and who actually works for whom, and who actually has the power to fix these things. We The People do… At least when over a quarter of us don’t sit out the vote, in protest of the choices you get, when you don’t demand better.
Or maybe, we can realize it’s ‘our jobs’ to hold our elected officials responsible after all. That what’s best for us is more important to them than what’s best for a company, and their personal bank accounts. That we deserve a living compensation for our labors as the starting point, not the entitlement CEO’s and lobbyists would have us believe it is. That 40 hours is 40 hours, no matter what it’s spent doing.
References
“Federal Poverty Level (FPL) – HealthCare.gov Glossary.” HealthCare.gov, http://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/federal-poverty-level-FPL/.
“Minimum Wage.” United States Department of Labor, 24 Feb. 2017, http://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/minimumwage.
Webber, Rebecca. “Average Household Budget.” ValuePenguin, ValuePenguin, 22 Nov. 2017, http://www.valuepenguin.com/average-household-budget.
— Jocelyn Johnson
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