McDonalds’ suggested budget for employees shows how impossible it is to get by
deathandtaxesmag.com
deathandtaxesmag.com
http://www.peri.umass.edu/fileadmin/pdf/resources/Minimum_Wa...
>In 1968, the real value of the minimum wage was $10.65, so that, in fact, an increase today to a $10.50 federal minimum would not even bring the minimum wage fully back to the 1968 standard. Moreover, since 1968, average U.S. labor productivity has risen by 135 percent. Thus, if, since 1968, the U.S. minimum wage had only just kept up with inflation and average labor productivity growth, the minimum wage today would be $25.00.
Also, minimum wage is a terrible measure to use here. Look at median wages, or even look at the upper end of the bottom quintile. Less than 3% of the country's workforce earns at or below minimum wage. [http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2012.htm]
People think that employers would take advantage of workers without min wage, and it's just not true (most of the time). In fact, the min wage enables them to do just that now since real market wages are above min wage laws.
Assuming so many hours worked is rather sickening though.
My sister worked in a minimum wage job for a few years and that was fine, she was using it to gain work experience and the money she earned was enough to buy things she needed and to pay for her further education, now she has used that experience (and education) to start a career and hopefully within a couple of years she'll be well on her way to a lifetime of good earnings, all off of the back of minimum wage. The minimum wage being higher for her would have made no real difference, it was enough for her to justify working and to be able to afford to invest in her future. The problem lies entirely with the long term reliance on minimum wage, which is not a problem that McDonalds is responsible for.
The bug bear is that a very high percentage of the people earning minimum wage need state intervention to actually live.
If minimum wage does not pay enough to pay rent and local taxes - plus a reasonable social security contribution (health insurance in the USA) then the job is being subsidised by the people earning just a little more (the tax payer?) - so this is a subsidy to the employer - often a very large one.
I resent being asked to subside jobs where employers should be required to pay a living wage. I have no issue with the employees - only respect because they are doing their best in a tough market place.
The minimum wage-earning family breadwinners whose incomes are heavily topped up with child benefits and housing benefits might be being heavily subsidised, but that's because their living costs far exceed those of more employable people, not because McDonalds (or the local shop that barely scrapes a profit most open hours) is underpaying them due to their subsidies. Cutting their benefits gives McDonalds incentive whatsoever to raise their pay, because there's no shortage of unemployed, unskilled people willing to cram into shoddy shared flats and work as many hours in the week as possible.
I'm not a fan of corporate welfare like the Job Skills Agency paying a quarter of McDonalds' annual training budget, but there's no way you can prevent the existence of unskilled, un(der)employed people with few expenses dragging down the earnings of unskilled employed people that can't balance their budgets without subsidising them or auctioning off their kids.
People will start screaming at politicians to "create new jobs", and for the skill level there's not much you can do except having subsidized cheap joints.
That said, I think the budget is pretty skewed as well, and assumes a few things that I propose are incorrect. For starters, having a car payment (or really a car at all) is an incredibly bad idea. I'd also posit that living in a non-shared situation is also un-ideal. I'd also suggest that if you're not making enough money, you shouldn't have a cellphone nor cable TV, but I suppose you could qualify for the infamous "Obamaphone". IMHO you could cut $600/mo off that spend then tack on $40/mo for a bus pass, tack on $80/mo for a reasonable healthcare bill, $30/mo for some cheap DSL or even dialup so you're not totally off the grid. That leaves you with $450 and only working the MCDs job.
This obviously isn't to say it'd be a marvellous life, but its not working two jobs/etc.
I think the other disconnect is that people expect a "job" to be a "career" as well, and IMHO thats just wrong in this situation. Someone who's working a min-wage job is either just getting into the workforce (as a teenager or something) or someone who can't get anything else. The someone who can't get anything else, I don't know what to do about that, but its not the problem of wage payers to help them out.
If you're on minimum wage, internet is easily accessible from a library, McDonalds, or Starbucks. Or find a landlord offering it bundled.
Cheap cell plans from $20 upwards do exist.
I'm not saying this is ideal, but then again, we're talking about minimum wage. I used to work at McDonalds in Canada and one of my co-workers worked her way up to manager and managed to go to college part time. Granted, she was also living at home with her parents and our post-secondary education is heavily subsidized up here.
Anyway, the main point of the bit still stands. Just the difference between premiums and what it would cost to actually get care was a little off.
$70-$140/mo for private health insurance sounds like what you pay if you're young and completely healthy.
...as long as that person has never had a blip on a health check in the past, and is under 30.
$215 is nowhere near the high end for individual coverage, even for high-deductible plans. Think multiples of that number. I wouldn't be surprised if there were people paying over $1500 for a high-deductible plan for one person.
Most of the plans I've looked into have fine print that makes it more likely that they'll deny coverage than try to charge someone more than $300 month in the sub-30 male cohort.
Obviously I'm ignoring family/dependents.
I'm wasn't trying to suggest that health care was affordable, or that the kind of coverage someone in the position mentioned could get would be sufficient - at best it would probably make them go bankrupt a few month later in most cases - Just that a large number of fast food workers could probably get insured for somewhat less than the assumed estimate. Presuming no diabetes, cancer, other major issues.
Obviously if you were born in 1960s or 1970s then your base rate goes up to 120 - 400 range instead, and people no longer young are obviously likely to be less healthy to begin with, which makes it improbable that you'd get near the low rate.
Anyway, I wanted the takeaway to be that regardless of even being able to get insurance for less, it's worthless because if anything goes wrong maximum out of pocket would still ruin anybody in that kind of work position, not to mention the spiral effect of missing work, not that I obviously don't really know how much it costs to insure older people or women.
Another vote for "You are incorrect and are very likely basing this on your sole experience of shopping for a young, single, no kids, healthy male's insurance."
In a word: no.
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It costs more to be poor than it does to be rich. Poor people can't afford to wait for sales and deals. They buy three crappy $30 pairs of shoes instead of one nice $60 pair of shoes because they live paycheck-to-paycheck. They will take the best car that they can find because maybe they can't save up $2000 all at once to buy a cheap used car.
Agreed. Now, let's stop talking about them for a minute and address the ones that are lazy. The ones that are only ever looking for a handout and specifically not looking for a leg up. I know some of these people. Allow me to paraphrase them: "Why should I do anything if I'm going to get a check from the government anyway? And why should I even think about doing anything else if all they'll do is take my guaranteed money away when I do something else?"
Now, how will we address this segment of society? Because clearly, these are the ones in danger of becoming criminals (of which we have plenty) if they're required to stop suckling.
Also, there are plenty in between. If the only job you're willing to do is assemble burritos for minimum wage for four hours a day, why are you entitled to a "living wage?"
Finally, let's look at the economics. The only way to not have anything resembling a classist system is if every [productive] member of society earned the same wage. But that's not feasible because it removes a tremendous amount of efficiency from the market. All kinds of market indicators are gone. I suspect (economist that I am not) it would lead to near-term economic chaos settling into a completely non-innovative society. Why strive for anything better when we're all "the same?"
Edit: Am I just too ranty? I don't understand the downvotes without replies.