yeah since 7.50 per hour doesn't make you poor.
it makes you well to do and gives you the flexibility to move about this world as you wish.
thing is that you somehow keep the thought in your mind that employing people and paying them shit, while the company enjoys great profit margins. a large store keeps it's employees below poverty levels so it's manager could own a pair of Mercedes.
nearly every word in your post reeks of envy. should a wage slave who puts in his eight and goes home to relax be afforded the means to acquire luxury cars, weekends at the spa and grand vacations or are those the things that are earned through extra effort and responsibility? all that is keeping those $7.50 an hour laborers from moving about in search of something better is an unwillingness to risk the relative security of what they already have. no one demands that they simply settle for what is offered them. no one is insisting that they start a family and incur debt without some long range plan as to how they will go about supporting the expense.
no, $7.50 an hour doesn't make you poor. i've lived quite extravagantly on much less. of course, things were far less expensive back then. the point isn't how much you make, but what you do with it and what you are willing to do to make more. what you earn is not the sole decision of some faceless corporate entity. even the most uncaring chains regularly reward those employees that are an actual asset to the company, instead of merely another material expenditure, the price of doing business. if your only aspiration is to fill that minimum wage position and milk it for as much as you can, you are no more important than the forklift or the cash register you operate and you are a far less efficient source of revenue. business is, after all, business and profit is the most important part of their operation. all the altruistic gestures and charitable donations are merely a part of the game of turning a profit. would you prefer they ignored that reality and handed out huge bonuses for the few months they would be able to operate without profit?
and for some reason you find that it's fair to have this work relationship, and that the welfare designed to help these struggling employees is somehow an unfair burden on the rich. when keeping these guys below poverty levels is exactly what requires them to seek for some sort of assistance so their lives is somewhat less shitty....
i understand that you have a long time hatred of the wealthy, but the growth of the welfare state isn't a drain merely on them. it is a burden on the ethos of the nation as a whole. while you concern yourself with redistributing the fruits of the nation's past labors, other, wiser minds concern themselves with more than just the comforts of today. our trend toward indolence, a violent entitlement mentality and the fleeing of industry from our shores are all direct results of the demand that the taxpaying private sector finance government's lackadaisical attempts to care for the people. by removing much of the pain from poverty, we have made life as a dependent of the state comfortable enough to be preferable by many to the effort needed to rise above those ranks. by gauging our compassion on handouts instead of real opportunities, we have created the complacency that leads to apathy and eventually to the disintegration of any work ethic at all.
i know that the statist stance is to blame all this on business and claim our only hope is regulation, nationalization and redistribution, but none of these create anything. the state itself has never created a single thing. it may direct creation and it may mandate creation by the private sector, but government is nothing more than a bunch of middle-managers pushing the citizenry around some imaginary game board through the use of the violent power of the state. all of that wealth that is confiscated in the name of compassion had to first be created and confiscating the means to create more is self-defeating.
