Do you believe Americans who work full time should earn a living wage?

OddBall1st said:

The Field Marshall was proven to be wrong, his spearhead Front abandoned conflict,....over....

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OddBall1st said:

Halliburton couldn`t match that guy`s Service Jacket in a million years,....At, "The Buldge", the Field Marshall was proven wrong,......

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Grandpapy said:

Australia.

While we in the United States are arguing over $1 increase to the minimum wage and whether or not people should get to stay home when they're sick, the rest of the world has long since passed us by. In Australia and other rich countries overseas, life is simply better than it is in America, for almost everyone.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/5601-fair-work-fair-pay-lessons-from-australia#

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Grandpapy said:

Australia.

While we in the United States are arguing over $1 increase to the minimum wage and whether or not people should get to stay home when they're sick, the rest of the world has long since passed us by. In Australia and other rich countries overseas, life is simply better than it is in America, for almost everyone.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/5601-fair-work-fair-pay-lessons-from-australia#

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BDOGKush said:

That sounded nice but it's very misleading to state that $21 is the minimum wage for fast food workers in Australia. It looks nice on paper but Australia bases minumum wage on age and there are plenty of ways for them to get around paying a minimum wage.

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Grandpapy said:

My apologizes, I didn't mean to miss lead you, $21 was for the part timers.
Those with full benefits only make $17.03
Thank you for making note of it.

Edit, it may be important to note that was in 2011.

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OddBall1st said:

So should I just say wages,...you already would know ,How much ? Minimum wage tells you, How much,....if it were just , wage, .... it wouldn`t.....

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schuylaar said:

[QUOTE="BDOGKush, post: 11581181, member: 689964"]Different rates apply to the young, apprentices/trainees, and people with a disability.

Australians with disabilities can be paid a percentage of the minimum wage based on an assessment of their work capacity.

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schuylaar said:

but you had mentioned skill, talent as part of the mix..which it is not.

you can't have your cake and eat it too.

minimum wage is the lowest wage that can possibly be paid by law .

rules, regulations and laws are all a result of some employer, somewhere, abusing and/or cheating their employees!

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Uncle Ben said:

I use small "seed" potatoes planted whole which cuts down on rot as opposed to cutting up big potatoes. I plant 6" under. Won't have much of a crop this year thanks to a hailstorm. Red and Yukon Gold are my faves. Tried 'em all.

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BDOGKush said:

"According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics there are about 3.6 million workers at or below the minimum wage (you can be below legally under certain conditions). That is 2.5 percent of all workers and 1.5 percent of the population of potential workers. Within that small group, 31 percent are teenagers and 55 percent are 25 years old or younger. That leaves only about 1.1 percent of all workers over 25 and 0.8 percent of all Americans over 25 earning the minimum wage."

"Within that tiny group, most of these workers are not poor and are not trying to support a family on only their earnings. In fact, according to a recent study, 63 percent of workers who earn less than $9.50 per hour (well over the minimum wage of $7.25) are the second or third earner in their family and 43 percent of these workers live in households that earn over $50,000 per year. Thus, minimum wage earners are not a uniformly poor and struggling group; many are teenagers from middle class families and many more are sharing the burden of providing for their families, not carrying the load all by themselves."

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2014/01/30/almost-everything-you-have-been-told-about-the-minimum-wage-is-false/

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OddBall1st said:

You are one confused Mother`f`r,....I mentioned labor and talent because that`s what you`re doing for the wage, not as a president to set it.

What the fuck do you mean ?

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Padawanbater2 said:

You think so, do ya..? Two testimonies from Reddit asking the question "Redditors who are 30-60 and working in minimum wage jobs, how do you feel about the way your life has gone?serious replies only";

"Thirty-one. Two degrees. $8/hour to fry chicken.

I'm blind in one eye, probably will be increasingly blind as time goes on. I survive on about $50 of food a month. Every thing I do is a struggle just to exist. Some days I just curl up and cry. I find happiness in things, and in the people I care about. But I feel like I'm just an obsolete burden. I can't do the things everyone expects nowadays. The world just changed into something I'm really bad at. I get yelled at when I do my simple job because I can't multitask like other people, but what jobs are there that don't ask for that anymore?

I don't know. I don't have a solution. Every time something might be working out, it evaporates. My plan for grad school evaporated when my college lost funding. My plan for eye treatment evaporated when my governor declined the Medicaid expansion. My plan for work evaporated with thousands of applications and resumes given no responses. Every day I feel my teeth break slightly more as I grind them. Every day I get closer to losing yet another job when I finally snap and tell the boss, who is always younger, less experienced, and less educated than I am, that just because he is a manager of a silly fast food place doesn't mean he can talk to that poor kid like that, because there's always some poor late-teen kid who is getting treated like a dog by the management.

I feel unwelcome. Like I should find a quiet closet and a quiet end. That is pretty much the sum of how my life makes me feel. Like no matter what anyone may say in the comments, that you'd all breathe just a bit easier if I was gone."


"I did everything right. I went to college for journalism. Two years in I realized that newspaper writing is just Mad Libs without the creativity, and dropped out. Went to college for radio. "Follow your dreams, go to college, you'll succeed." I finished with a 4.0 GPA every single semester. I ran two shows on community radio and held down a job the whole time to help live on more than just my student loan. I crushed my internship. I also graduated into a recession. 7 years later, my diploma is obsolete and useless. The debt is crippling and I had to move back in with my parents. If I didn't do what you're supposed to do with life, I wouldn't be in this mess. I can't off myself because my folks already lost one kid and I'm not putting them through a suicide. So every day I punch the clock doing work I have no passion for at all, and for less money than I can afford to live on. This is hell. There's no other way to sum it up. I have a life of debt to look forward to and I'm never getting out. Factor in being 34 and living with my folks, and the "loser" tag gets applied, rightly or wrongly, regardless of how I wound up there. So I have a shit job, I had to move back home, I have crippling debt, and women won't give me the time of day. There's basically nothing I won't do at this point because death just doesn't scare me. It would be preferable to this existence all day long. In theory I could go back to school, but for what? Even more debt on the lottery shot that it pays off and I really like what I do? If I can even find another profession I want to do? That's what got me here in the first place. People talk about college like its the pathway to success, but they leave out a lot of information.

So basically I set myself up for incredible success in "my industry" and it ruined my life because it didn't pan out. If I can manage to check out early without having to do it myself I'd be very, very happy to do so. That's also the real reason I haven't quit smoking. Anything to make this stop sooner."

Go read some more about how only teenagers who don't have to provide for their families are the only ones struggling working minimum wage, you might get a little dose of reality.

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/35kl63/serious_redditors_who_are_3060_and_working_in/

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Padawanbater2 said:

You think so, do ya..? Two testimonies from Reddit asking the question "Redditors who are 30-60 and working in minimum wage jobs, how do you feel about the way your life has gone?serious replies only";

"Thirty-one. Two degrees. $8/hour to fry chicken.

I'm blind in one eye, probably will be increasingly blind as time goes on. I survive on about $50 of food a month. Every thing I do is a struggle just to exist. Some days I just curl up and cry. I find happiness in things, and in the people I care about. But I feel like I'm just an obsolete burden. I can't do the things everyone expects nowadays. The world just changed into something I'm really bad at. I get yelled at when I do my simple job because I can't multitask like other people, but what jobs are there that don't ask for that anymore?

I don't know. I don't have a solution. Every time something might be working out, it evaporates. My plan for grad school evaporated when my college lost funding. My plan for eye treatment evaporated when my governor declined the Medicaid expansion. My plan for work evaporated with thousands of applications and resumes given no responses. Every day I feel my teeth break slightly more as I grind them. Every day I get closer to losing yet another job when I finally snap and tell the boss, who is always younger, less experienced, and less educated than I am, that just because he is a manager of a silly fast food place doesn't mean he can talk to that poor kid like that, because there's always some poor late-teen kid who is getting treated like a dog by the management.

I feel unwelcome. Like I should find a quiet closet and a quiet end. That is pretty much the sum of how my life makes me feel. Like no matter what anyone may say in the comments, that you'd all breathe just a bit easier if I was gone."


"I did everything right. I went to college for journalism. Two years in I realized that newspaper writing is just Mad Libs without the creativity, and dropped out. Went to college for radio. "Follow your dreams, go to college, you'll succeed." I finished with a 4.0 GPA every single semester. I ran two shows on community radio and held down a job the whole time to help live on more than just my student loan. I crushed my internship. I also graduated into a recession. 7 years later, my diploma is obsolete and useless. The debt is crippling and I had to move back in with my parents. If I didn't do what you're supposed to do with life, I wouldn't be in this mess. I can't off myself because my folks already lost one kid and I'm not putting them through a suicide. So every day I punch the clock doing work I have no passion for at all, and for less money than I can afford to live on. This is hell. There's no other way to sum it up. I have a life of debt to look forward to and I'm never getting out. Factor in being 34 and living with my folks, and the "loser" tag gets applied, rightly or wrongly, regardless of how I wound up there. So I have a shit job, I had to move back home, I have crippling debt, and women won't give me the time of day. There's basically nothing I won't do at this point because death just doesn't scare me. It would be preferable to this existence all day long. In theory I could go back to school, but for what? Even more debt on the lottery shot that it pays off and I really like what I do? If I can even find another profession I want to do? That's what got me here in the first place. People talk about college like its the pathway to success, but they leave out a lot of information.

So basically I set myself up for incredible success in "my industry" and it ruined my life because it didn't pan out. If I can manage to check out early without having to do it myself I'd be very, very happy to do so. That's also the real reason I haven't quit smoking. Anything to make this stop sooner."

Go read some more about how only teenagers who don't have to provide for their families are the only ones struggling working minimum wage, you might get a little dose of reality.

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/35kl63/serious_redditors_who_are_3060_and_working_in/

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londonfog said:

That guy seems like he made some real bad decisions when it came to career paths and schooling. I mean "radio school "? Would have been better to get a degree in communications. I would hire him at 11 an hour.

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BDOGKush said:

I made the same mistake and went to an audio engineering trade school. You don't see me crying about how my choice in schooling didn't pan out.

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Rob Roy said:

So why not increase the minimum wage to $1,000 an hour ?

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BDOGKush said:

Unskilled workers in the food service industry make $21.00 an hour, where?

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