Did you know that while someone is working in the Midwest for a minimum wage of 5.15 an hour, someone living in Los Angeles, California could be getting paid 10.33 an hour at minimum wage?!
The federal minimum wage is 5.15 per hour, but is that really enough? For states in the Midwest, 5.15 isn't as bad as it could be... unless you live in Kansas where the minimum wage is 2.65!! Wait a minute, I thought the federal minimum wage was almost 3 dollars higher than that. Well, yes, that's what it should be...
How is it that the federal government sets a minimum wage, but not all states have to abide by it? I thought the federal government was supreme in this country. While kids in Kansas only get 2.65 as their minimum wage, some states, such as Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arizona, don't even have a set minimum wage. Employers decide what they want to pay their employees.
The price of living in the Midwest states semi-suits the minimum wage (as much as we disagree). The cost of living closer to the coasts and in bigger cities, though, is double that of where I live in Nebraska. Some coastal cities, where a house valued for $150,000 in Nebraska is worth over $300,000, actually don't have that much of a profit from their higher minimum wages. Food, transportation, and housing costs much more than it does coming inland. Cities like Los Angeles (10.33 without benefits and 9.08 with benefits), San Francisco (8.82), and even Sante Fe, New Mexico (9.50) have hourly wages that I couldn't dream of getting where I live.
What's the minimum wage where you live? Do you think it follows the costs of living in your city, and do you think your job pays enough?
Let's see. I work for an hour, I buy my lunch, and I end up with a negative number.
Minimum wage in NY is somewhere in the middle: $6.75. But NYC, for example, is an expensive city, and this wage is not enough.
Yea....I agree. I remember at work i was doing research about that stuff and Alaska had a higher minimum wage than NYC and i think so did some random states in the West. NYC has a much higher cost of living.
The reason why is because in California things are more expensive. Or rather when they raised the miniumum wage the cost of living increased along with everything else.
Do you have sources? I was under the impression it was $6.75 in Cali.
Alex J.
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"Follow not me, but you!" -Friedrich Nietzsche
Yes I do have sources. I double-checked more than one to make sure. But actually, you're right. 6.75 is the minimum wage in California, but the few big cities I mentioned in my blog actually have higher minimum wages than the rest of the state because the cost of living is significantly higher in those particular cities.
Would you mind sharing them? I am from the LA area, but not the actual city and I wasn't aware of that fact. So I'm curious. Thanks.
Alex J.
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"Follow not me, but you!" -Friedrich Nietzsche
Sure! I truthfully could not access the second of the above mentioned sources, but here's the one I based my blog on. It has sources within itself though, so I hope that proves helpful!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_minimum_wages
Thanks for the link. I followed that link to the NPR site. This is what it says,
The law requires companies that do business with the city -- such as airport restaurants or parking lots -- must pay workers at least $9.08 per hour with health benefits, or $10.33 without. The law currently covers 10,000 workers.
So, to reiterate, that only includes people working for certain companies. I'm not trying to be a nuisance, I'm just trying to get the facts straight. Cheers.
Alex J.
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"Follow not me, but you!" -Friedrich Nietzsche
Ok, I think I got this straightened out now.
Try this site. Apparently there is a different between a 'minimum wage' and a 'living wage.' I think that was where the confusion came from. Thanks for the info! I learned something new.
http://drybonesdance.typepad.com/dry_bones_dance/2005/03/the_difference_.html
Ah yes...minimum wage and living wage. I sometimes confuse the two as well. But yes...minimum wage anywhere is not much of a wage at all. Surprisingly enough, I believe I read somewhere that you can make more money than teachers a year by managing McDonalds....
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http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/whitejabberwocky
Definitely true, however, you'll need a bachelor's degree just like a teacher. You could make about 5 times as much as a teacher by managing a Wal Mart where I live.
F*** Religion. Read more here:
http://www.progressiveu.org/020528-f-religion
I'll re-post my comment from another thread:
"I read an essay by George Reisman the other day that explained what government interventionism is in all it forms, and that the way to eliminate poverty is to roll back on these. The first one he listed was the minimum wage law. Here's the provocative thesis for that section:
'To increase the incomes of poor people, the first thing that must be done is to abolish laws that prevent them from working and thus from earning income. The leading example of this type of law is the minimum-wage law, which forces people into unemployment and thereby deprives them both of the income they might earn by working and of the opportunity of gaining work experience and quite possibly of developing work skills that would later on enable them to perform more valuable work and thus earn more than they could presently earn.'
"This sounds outrageous, of course, but it only makes economic sense, which politicians and ordinary citizens have very little of. I'd urge you to not simply turn your mind off to the essay, but read that section. It might seem long, but the section on the minimum wage law is short enough. Stated very simply, a repeal of the minimum wage law would allow more poor people to work, causing prices to drop relative to the drop in wages, thus increasing the buying power of those wages, or in other words increasing real wages.
"There are other strong ideas there. This is irrelevant (just another intriguing find in that essay), but it seems that the government owns about 48% of you, if you accurately count all the ways. And this does not consider the restrictions of freedom via interventionism, on which a dollar value cannot be placed."
I really will just make a comprehensive post on the minimum wage someday, but now it's 2:07 am and I ought to get to sleep. Jacqulyn, if you read this, I'm certainly going to write a nice reply there, too. yawn.
Michael Allen Yarbrough
I think that NYC should have about a 13.00 minimum wage becasue when I was visiting there...I couldn't believe how much money I spent on stupid things that are suppossed to be cheap like food, and gadgets. Parking was 17.00 per hour!! That's right!! $17.00. Luckily we were gonig to visit my boyfriends mother and we made her pay. How outrageous.
The states are allowed to set a "state minimum wage" but as you'll noticed on the Wikipedia chart that you referenced, when the state minimum wage is less than the federal minimum wage, the federal wage takes precedence. That means that no matter what the state's min. wage is, employers still cannot pay people below the federal minimum.
Many people say that they get below minimum wage while working for a resaurant. Usually somewhere around $2.30 per hour. The rest is made up in tips. If you add your hourly wage to the tips that you receive, and it turns out to be less than the federal or state minimum hourly wage, your employer is REQUIRED by federal minimum wage laws to make up the difference. This means that even if you "earn below minimum wage", you are still being paid at least minimum wage. If you are not, then you need to report your employer to the authorities. Just be ready with your proof, and be ready to look for a different job.
In Chicago, the min. wage is about $6.75 I think
The minimum wage hurts workers in the long run as it goes higher. A worker's wages are based on his productivity. An artificial wage increase without a corresponding productivity increase places a financial burden on the employer which he compensates for by cutting hours, benefits or even Jobs. Jim Harper of UC Irvine found that for every 20% increase in the minimum wage there is a 1% increase in the unemployment of its targeted benificiaries.
Well, I work for minimum wage, so I can say, it's not enough to live on. But again it depends on where you work too. I mean my waitress friends make between 2-4 an hour not including tips, then some "upscale" stores may pay you 7.50 rather than 5 (it's still not enough). When thinking of why some places don't raise the minimum wage, ask many who work for it, and they'd probably say "in order to keep the people down" but I don't know. It'd be interesting to research to see why the govt. really would allow people to work at these wages (often without health insurance) and be expected to realistically get by. I look around at some of my friends who are 30, and have to have 4 roomates to get by in the city, and I'm thinking there's something wrong here. They should hike up the wages- everywhere. And I know there's the tax debate on that, but my thoughts are, if you're rich you can afford it.
I worked in a restaurant for quite a while. It was $2.13 per hour plus tips. Taxes are taken out of the gigantic wage, so usually i would end up owing them money to work there in order to pay the taxes on my tips. The hourly tip average, however, was usually about 25-30 bucks per hour plus you usually tell them what days and hours you work . Don't let anyone whining about waitstaff wages earn your sympathy.
F*** Religion. Read more here:
http://www.progressiveu.org/020528-f-religion
There is also a moral argument against the minimum wage that rarely gets considered. Employment is a matter of private contract. The worker gives of his time and his labor in exchange for payment. What isn't considered is that a worker's paycheck comes directly from another individual's private property. The employer offers that position out of his own choice, just as the worker takes the position voluntarily. For government to impose itself on both parties as a contract negotiator is a violation of contractual freedom, and completely ignores one of the most basic human rights: that of private property.
Economist Frederic Bastiat made the argument in the 19th century that government can give nothing to society that it doesn't take from it in the first place. This is so true with the minimum wage. The financial burden it places on employers eventually comes around to hurt workers, consumers and small business owners. Wal Mart was, in fact, a major supporter of the recent min wage hike. Why? It weeds out the competition. Big corporations like Wall Mart can afford that kind of increase, but smaller enterprises can't.