Minimum Wage - let's make policy via emotion - Granite Grok

Minimum Wage – let’s make policy via emotion

From the Houston Chronicle comes this headline:

What would an increase in the federal minimum wage mean? 

Well, if you had the chance to listen to Dr. Walter E. Williams on our radio show (Meet The New Press), you’d already be skipping to the next post (pssst: listen here to the podcast – click on the iPod for more podcasts from the show). 

Well, here are some stories from that article:

Two months into her minimum wage job at Target, Tara Dennis, 23, realized she and her three children would be better off if she was unemployed and on food stamps. So she quit.

"As a single mom, minimum wage isn’t going to get me ahead. It’s not even going to get me caught up," said Dennis, who lives in Missoula, Mont.

"It got to the point where if I wasn’t working there, I could be with my kids and pay my bills," Dennis said.

Montana, where Dennis lives, was among states that passed minimum wage increases in the November election, along with Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nevada and Ohio.

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Herman McCowan, 61, of Cleveland, was active in the Ohio office of Let Justice Roll, an organization that advocated a higher minimum wage. In Ohio, the minimum wage increased from $5.15 to $6.85 and will now be indexed to inflation.

"At $5.15 an hour, you can’t really extend yourself; you only exist," he said.

McCowan worked for four years as a day laborer, making $5.15 an hour, before landing a $6 an-hour job at a community center.

With the roughly $80 a week a full-time worker would have after the federal wage hike, "You’re able to afford a telephone, able to pay your light bill on time, able to pay your rent," he said.

If there are two people at home, "it will allow you to put a little more food on the table, sustain yourself a little bit better than before," McCowan said.

"You will be able to relieve a lot of the stress."

Another:

For some workers, a job near minimum wage is their only option.

Paula Berrios, 66, helps support her daughter and grandchildren in El Salvador working in a hotel kitchen for $7.18 an hour. Berrios, who lives in Alexandria, Va., does not speak English.

"I’m desperate," she said, speaking through a translator. "That’s all I can get."

 

The politically incorrect statement is "and what decisions have you made that have kept you from achieving more?" 

 

I can understand being down and out; I’ve been in the situation of not knowing where to find the change to buy milk for my kids’ breakfast as the computer technology field heaved and hoed in changing from mainframes to minicomputers to PC and servers and my services were no longer needed at companies that went out of business.  Thus, there is some sympathy there.

But only some.  At age 23, making three separate decisions to have kids without the education / skill set to support even one?  And where is Dad(s) in all this?  It is unfortunate, but she is finally realizing that she will not get ahead on minimum wage?  That it won’t get her caught up?

That it isn’t supposed to?

And Mr. McCowan – after 40 odd years in the workforce, the best he can do is manual, low-skill jobs?  If there are problems with intelligence (i.e., mentally handicapped), he does need assistance and society should help.  If that is NOT the case, and he has not had the motivation to get training (often times available in a number of arenas).

And Ms. Berrios.  Again, better than minimum wage, but not speaking English?  AND I will ask the question – is she here legally?  If so, there ARE classes to help learn English.  If not, she is part of the problem, as it has been shown that illegals depress low-skilled wages by up to 15% in a given area.

The mantra is get a high school diploma, don’t have kids out of wedlock, stay married, speak English.  If one does these simple things, one should be able to stay off the lowest rungs of society’s economic ladder.

Oh, before I forget!  What was the conclusion of the article?

But financial experts say the increase wouldn’t go far and is not a solution to poverty.

 

 

 

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