[Vision2020] Who earns minimum wage?

[g. crabtree]

My dearest Joan, do you imagine that I spend all my days ensconced behind a 
monitor, perusing  conservative web sites? Soaking up every trenchant morsel 
that the Cato institute lets fall? Every pearl the Heritage Foundation lets 
slip? You seem to have missed the bit in my bio that mentions that I am the 
very bluest of the blue collar. I am out in the working world seven days a 
week mingling with all manner of people from the disadvantaged to the quite 
well off. From the young and ignorant to the mature and canny. I have worked 
many different jobs and many of them at the same time. It would seem from 
your lengthy screed that you feel that raising the minimum wage to some 
arbitrary, undefined higher level will protect folks from bad luck and poor 
decision making. Seems unlikely. I don't  know how working hard might make 
one sick and I certainly haven't a clue about having one's soul devoured 
but, in my experience, I have found that it moves one forward and upward to 
the point where minimum wage is no longer an issue. Unless, that is, you'd 
like to see it pegged at $49.95. That'll solve the ills of the nation, I'm 
sure. Perhaps you should consider giving up writing soft core and try giving 
Stephen Resnick a run for his money by churning out a treatise on economics 
in the ethereal world of J. Opyr.

G. Crabtree
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Joan Opyr" <joanopyr at moscow.com>
To: <vision2020 at moscow.com>
Sent: Friday, August 04, 2006 9:39 PM
Subject: [Vision2020] Who earns minimum wage?


>I wouldn't call Gary's assessment of who earns minimum wage cold, nor yet
> cauld.  I'd call it ill-informed.  This is the sort of hard data you can
> dredge up at Heritage.org.  Taken out of its real human context, you wind
> up with a list of figures that sound okay, perhaps even reasonable, but if
> you get off the computer and out the front door and meet a few minimum-
> wage earners, you might see the point in lifting this base-line.
>
> Okay, fifty-some percent of those earning minimum wage are not the sole
> bread-winners in their family.  Those are the cold hard facts.  Say there
> are two people in a household working full-time and both earning minimum
> wage.  Your friend, Wal-Mart, keeps thousands of employees just below 
> full-
> time to avoid paying benefits, and the corporation complains bitterly that
> too many employees are staying with the company too long and thus earning
> a few bucks above minimum.  How do we get rid of those ambitious
> bastards?  But that's another post.
>
> Our two minimum wage earners together make $21,506 per year for eighty
> hours combined work per week.  Tell me: how do you advance in the
> workplace with only a high school diploma or a GED?  You go to college or
> trade school.  Great idea!  And how will you pay for that?  How will you
> get in?  Do you know how to apply?  There's ever greater demand for
> proportionally fewer slots.  Strike one.  Now imagine that you grew up
> poor.  College was never an option.  But you're clever.  You've read a few
> Horatio Alger American success stories, so you screw up your courage and
> apply.  Did you get in?  Lucky you.  Now, while you attend your classes,
> you continue to pay the rent, hold down your full-time job, and hope you
> don't get sick or need a root canal because you have no health care.
> Strike two.
>
> You finished college.  No illnesses; no catastrophes.  Your college loans
> total $40,000 and you've racked up another $10,000 on those easy-to-get
> credit cards.  You didn't major in engineering; math is not your strong
> suit.  Besides, you wanted to be a school teacher, and so you majored in
> education.  You spend three years subbing while you look for a job.  You
> earn more than you used to make, but it doesn't feel like all that much
> because your student loan payments and that damned credit card bill take a
> great fat whack out of your paycheck.  And, lo!  Wage increases are no
> longer keeping up with the rate of inflation.  Haven't been for some
> time.  Gas is three bucks a gallon.  You have to drive from Moscow to
> Genesee (or vice-versa) to sub.  Hard times.
>
> Who primarily works for minimum wage?  Teenagers, yes; retired people
> looking to earn a few extra bucks; and women with children, especially
> women of color.  What's the toll on society of $5.15 an hour?  People
> working for minimum wage are obliged to rely on public assistance.
> Medicaid, school lunch programs, subsidized housing, subsidized
> childcare.  What costs the state more, a low minimum wage or a solid
> living wage?  Which is richer, Washington, where the minimum wage is $7.65
> an hour, or Idaho, where it's $5.15?
>
> Don't talk to me about working two and three jobs like grandpappy did in
> the glorious 1950s.  I've worked three and sometimes four jobs, and I
> don't wish it on another living soul.  It makes you sick; it wears you
> out; it eats your soul.  When I ask Jerry Brady about Idaho and a living
> wage, I'll certainly pass on Gary's kind thoughts about bootstrapping it
> or eating cat food or whatever it is he thinks Mr. and Mrs.
> NotGaryCrabtree ought to do, and I'll be interested to hear what he has to
> say.  Very interested indeed.
>
> I only wish I could ask Butch Otter the same question.
>
> Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment
> www.joanopyr.com
>
>
>
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