Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Unreasonably high minimum wage ..... ?

What I've bolded and italicized is part of the problem. Government should not be providing those things. Once government starts sticking its nose where its nose doesn't belong, you get a slippery slope - we'll provide food stamps, we'll provide medical care, we'll provide heating fuel, now to cut the amount of our welfare payments we need to set "minimum wage" at a higher level? What that "minimum wage" is is a tax on everyone who purchases goods and services. Then we get back to the question of why is government involved in paying people for no reason other than they are breathing?

Our gov't can no longer afford the bureauracy necessary to enforce their detailed interference.

What you really have there is "Joe taxpayer" subsidizing the wages of Wal-Mart's {or whatever ABC low wage employer} employees. Don't you like "making up" for what Wal-Mart isn't paying their own workers ? Makes it a helluva lot easier for them to make big profits when you're willing to help them pay their labor expenses !

$300/month for utilities? How big a place are you talking about renting?

Most people working minimum wage are young and typically don't need medical care.

With regard to rent, if someone is not making much money, he might need to look at doing like some of the illegals do and putting several bunkbeds in an apartment and paying $100/month apiece in rent and splitting utilities similarly. Another alternative is to move to a cheaper city/state to live.

Who said everyone has to own a motor vehicle? Bicycles aren't very expensive and they are very low maintenance. Walking is cheap too. Public transportation is available in cities. Catching a ride with someone is often an option, too.

A person can live on $5/hour at a 40 hr/wk job if they try.

A minimum wage type job isn't expected to be a permanent type job. Yes, for some people that type of job might be, but if we took away government's artificial supports, then people would know they had to develop skills to survive.

You just don't get it and doubt you ever will.

State clearly, here and now, what your solution is.

What are you talking about? What I'm saying is that the taxpayer shouldn't be subsidizing anyone who doesn't work for the government in some productive mode.

I agree with Blackheart. For the rest of you here's the math.



7.25 per hour x 133 hours per month = $964.25

Less ~ 16% in taxes ($154.28) = $809.97 take home per month.


$400.00 a month to rent a room plus utilities. Say ? $450.00

Three meals a day for 30 days @ $3.00 a meal = ? $210.00 I guess if you had to you could spend less on food but how many of you can honestly say you do.

$809.97 - ($450.00 + $210.00) = $149.97 a month leftover for ....

A car, gas, insurance ...... easy enough to say skip that and ride a bike but is it practical though? As a former business owner and employer one question I always asked was, "Do you have reliable transportation?" If they no, my answer was .... Next!

What about clothes, medical and some form of entertainment to keep yourself sane? What happens if you need a new ...... pair of eyeglasses ... a pair of shoes ... a winter coat ... a Christmas gift? How about just one of those unplanned expenses that every runs into?


How can anyone survive on less?

Who's out of touch?? Ever hear of roommates??

The solution to what's going on in America right now is more economic liberty and smaller government.

I don't see how minimum wage has to be equated with a sufficient lifestyle for a single person to live no matter how menial the job. I also don't see it as a government responsibility to make up the shortfall. There should not be any correlation.

Well said.

Another point well taken.

If you're poor like that, you have to share expenses with someone. Can't exclusively occupy a room or apartment. Reality of life. Solution is to work hard, establish a track record, gain experience, become more marketable.

That doesn't take a big place. Winters are long and cold here Jack and fuel oil ain't [bleep]' cheap ! And at NYSEG prices if you can get by without using at least 75.00 a month electric you're gonna be living in the dark ! And let's not forget laundry expenses. Last time my washer broke down it cost me about 20.00 to wash and dry a weeks worth of laundry. In case you'd forgotten, folks who actually "work" fore a living tend to get dirty !

As I responded above, people can live on $5/hr if they need to. If you are a business owner, feel free to pay people $7.25/hr, $10/hr, $20/hr or whatever you want to. Someone making minimum wage probably is going to need to have a roommate, or multiple roommates, to pay for rent and utilities.

Someone can live on $50/week of groceries if they buy smart. That's particularly doable if one shares the cost of home-prepared meals with roommates.

A bike can be reliable transportation if a person maintains his bike.

When I was in grad school, I lived on around $920/month after taxes (had a fixed salary of $1000/month), and some of my colleagues were getting by on a pre-tax salary of only $700 or $800 per month. Out of that $920/month, I would tithe $100/month, pay around $350/month for rent/utilities, and paid an average of around $50 per month in school fees (total about $600/year), and an average of around $50 to $75/month for books (cost of books during year was in the neighborhood of $600 to $800 spread out over the year). I finished 21 months of graduate school with more money than I started with.

Marketable to who ya dumb schitt ? I know folks around here now who have college degree's and are working as janitors for 8 bucks an hour because that's all they can get.

If utilities are too expensive for what you make, start finding out where you can live within your means. Keep your place colder in the winter and warmer in the summer. A lot of places in this country have mild winters and heating oil isn't an expense at all.

and the reason for that is government interference in the marketplace. The source of this whole mega recession we are in was government (Barney Frank, Bill Clinton, and others) putting pressure of Fannie and Freddie to make unwise housing loans. If employers could pay a janitor $4 or $5 per hour, then they might be able to hire more college graduates in college graduate-type jobs. Government is the source of our problems, not the solution.

Why not equate to a single person? What about someone just of high school that has to go to work for a living? What percentage of people attend college? What percentage of people enter the workforce unskilled and underqualified?

I wholeheartedly agree that govt shouldn't make up the shortfall.

Razorback has it right and touches at the heart of the problem.




Without reform to our entire system of unemployment, welfare, foods stamps, govt subsidies, the medical system and on and on ............

Eliminating minimum wage is impractical.

So you expect your fellow Americans to live like illegal Mexican migrant workers huh ? I suppose you COULD live on 5 bucks an hour, if you don't mind living in a grass hut and driving a jackass to work !