Never mind the minimum wage, in your opinion what does a person need to make for a living wage today?

Question

Have we become so jaded we now refuse to pay people who work hard every day a true living wage? How much in your opinion does a person need to make each month to cover their rent/mortgage, food, utility bills, clothing, toilet paper, transportation etc. The bare essentials, no vacations, internet, cable, insurance. The bare essentials.

Answer 1

depends on where you are...

probably at least 30,000 in small towns

and 50,000 in the city...minimum

for what most consider "living"

Answer 2

There are so many factors in this. Where you live is important, but the length of your commute to your job and whether you use public transport or have your own car is also important. Especially in this day and age when gasoline is flirting with $3.00 a gallon in some parts of the country, and is over $3 a gallon already in others (i.e. California).

What your living situation is also is a big piece of the pie... do you own or do you rent? Does your rent go up every year? If you rent, you do not get to take it out of your taxes (though I think you can if you live in Massachusetts, at least- depends on the state).

Do you have a spouse and/or children? (You'll need to buy more groceries in this case.)

What are your state taxes and your town's taxes? These also factor in, besides the chunk the government already takes out of your check.

And are you counting health insurance on this? Or does that not count as a bare essential?

I don't think I can make a good guess out of this, as I'm living off of what I earn doing two jobs for that very reason- not wanting to constantly be in debt.

But I'd say if it's just one person living in each situation, I'd say at least $25,000 for the suburbs and $40,000 for the city as an annual wage.

Answer 3

The two biggest variables in your question are rent and transportation.
Let's start with transportation. Is owning a car necessary? I use to be lucky enough to live 1 mile from work, 2 groceries stores, a Target, a K-mart, several different restaurants, and a movie theater. Needless to say I walked to almost everything and bought (out-right) a piece of * beater car for getting out of town... Besides that the local bus system was ok.
Rent: depends on where you live and how big of a place you want. I've heard of rooms in San Francisco being rented out for 800/mnth while you can find 1500sqft homes in the South that rent for as much.
So as you can see a "living wage" is extemely regional... One city/county might need a living wage of over $10/hr while another might be fine at $4.50/hr. So trying to formulate some national standard of living wage will not work.
Thus, this is what I tell my econ students, "If you are going to work at a low skilled min wage for most of your life then find a job in one of the Southern states and save, Save, SAVE as much as you can." That's the only region (a large region) of the US that 2 people on the federal minimum wage can afford to buy a home if they save enough to have the conventional 20% down. That is, first find out how much it costs to live in an area before working in that area.

Answer 4

This question cannot be answered using the entire US. It costs, possibly, 10 times as much to live in NYC and California than in the southern mid-west. I have wondered why our government cannot see that a country wide minimum wage is absurd.
In the Ozarks (Missouri/Arkansas), $900.00 would cover necessities, provided the person is thrifty and realist about what and where they buy. That figure for persons in KC, St Louis, Little Rock...is too low. My guess is that it costs 50% more to live in the big cities of any state.

Reguardless, no person is worth more than he can or will produce. Business cannot pay according to the number of kids one has or the lifestyle they choose. Business must make a profit. Why stay in business just to break even and companies loosing money will close down. That means their employees are making nothing.

Answer 5

If you work 40 hours a week and get paid 15 dollars an hour, thats only 600 dollars a week x 4 = 2400 dollars in 4 weeks. out of 365 days a year, lets say you get paid every 2 weeks(14 days) so thus far the calculation would be 365 days / 14 days = approximately 26 paydays 26 x 1200(600 dollars a week x 2) = 31200 dollars a year if you make 31200 dollars a year then in a month you're making 2600 dollars only. lets take away taxes out of that, if you're single you're looking at approximately 20% out of your paycheck due to federal tax, social security, witheld etc and you're left with 2040 dollars a month to spend with! do you think that is enough to live?

Answer 6

thats going to vary greatly according to where you live.

I dont think its jaded. The thing is a job that requires no skill and no education that anyone can do just often isnt worth the amount of money that in some places is a living wage.

If you want to live your going to have to get a skill/education.

I would say in my area the bare essentials maybe 8.5 - 9 dollars.. 18k a year or so could get you by. If you were really frugal about it maybe less.

But im guessing its more like 30k some places and maybe 14k somewhere else.

The generally its expensive on the coasts, and in high growth areas, and cheaper in the center of the country , as far as the USA goes.

Answer 7

The issue is not the minimum wage. The real issue is affordable Health Insurance. Hospital and Doctor bills are the leading cause for bankruptcy in this country. A full 46 million Americans have no basic Health Insurance. Half are women and children.
The USA ranks 37th. in quality of Health care. France is number one the UK, Italy and Spain are above the USA. WE spend on average $7000 a year. No other country spends near that much.
Now Republicans want more illegals not less and Bush supports amnesty. This is a effort by the Republicans to flood the labor market and lower the quality of living standards for all Americans. A wage of $10 per hour means nothing if you or your loved one is too sick to work and can not afford to go to a Doctor or Hospital. Lack of affordable Health Insurance is Americas greatest problem.

Answer 8

I went to college on minum wage I worked shitty low pay jobs plus went to college it sucked I starved went without a home food car phone used a pay phone I had nothing I still have nothing I never got a degree had to drop out of college now I have no job no home I freze a lot in the winter it sucks having no home and nobdy cares why is having a home a prevledge and not a right why cant I have a home if I want one America sucks

Answer 9

"Minimum" wages and "living" wages are irrelevant. Even with laws in place that require these sorts of compensation, salaries and wages are based on competition between individuals. The pool of individuals who are capable of flipping burgers is much larger than the pool of individuals who are capable of, say, keeping the accounting records in a large company. Higher supply, lower wage. Simple. The simple fact of the matter is that what you earn is based on your intelligence, your training, and your willingness to work hard.

Companies aren't moving overseas for less expensive wages. They're moving because the folks there are willing to work much harder to earn a living than most Americans are. Most Americans seem to think they have a god given right to a plate full of food, a roof over their head, two cars in the garage, and any electronic toys they want. And someone else to pay for it all. This is simply unrealistic.

How much a person needs to survive is a different question, of course. Many of the things you list as "needs" are actually nice to haves. Transportation could be free (most people have two working legs) or very inexpensive (a decent bike only costs about $150). You don't actually "need" shelter in many areas of the world. Clothing can be gotten inexpensively and no-one "needs" fashionable clothes. You really can live pretty well on a shoe-string budget. Where I live, one person could probably quite easily survive (assuming they split rent with three other people) on about $600/month. And they would still have a car........

Answer 10

This depends on location. There is an organization you can find on the Internet under the website Living Wage that addresses this issue and have groups in various areas that assess the costs.

Answer 11

I think a person's work ethic and ability to handle difficult tasks is what makes your wage go up.

for example, like McDonald's why would the company pay an employee loads of money when you can always hire someone (anyone) to do the job?

versus someone who has degrees AND work experience. that person would be paid more because of the difficulty of the job and the minimum training that would be required.

to be considered to earn a raised wage, or a high wage, you have to be competitive in the job field. You cannot expect to earn much of find a job if you are only good typing letters, when the job or many jobs require experience in other things such as computer software.