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"The average American cashier makes $20,230 a year, a salary that in a single-earner household would leave a family of four living under the poverty line."

20k is on the low side, but one should still consider their own income before having children, especially two.

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One thing that nobody ever seems to point out in these discussions: Should we legally mandate that every job in the world must pay enough money to support a family of 4 as a single earner of the household? What about high school/college students, retirees, spouses of high earners, and other people who want a relatively low-skill job that doesn't pay that much? Should the kind of job they want be illegal because, someday, somebody who does have a family will take that job and then complain that it doesn't pay enough to raise their family?

It's far less economically distorting to top up a family's income with an EITC than by mandating higher wages. For one thing, it avoids giving employers incentive to cut back on labor costs.

Employers will not cut back on labor costs if there is demand and they're still making profits. They'll cry, bitch, whine and scream at congress because their profits took a hit, but they will not cut back if they're still making profits.

Lack of demand, on the other hand...

You're missing the word "enough" before profits. Employers are like any other investor. If returns on hiring more labor are less than buying new equipment or just forgoing expanding and investing back in the market, then they won't be hiring.

You forget substitute goods. You can substitute a cashier with a self-serve machine, you can buy and use machines to clean the store faster, you can reduce opening hours, you can plan the store so that fewer employees are needed, etc.

Yes capitalism is amoral so people will certainly be willing to pay to increase salary, but they are also willing to buy machines, outsource work, make customers do more and other things that reduce the need for employees.

If Wal-Mart raised their wages to CostCo levels, it wouldn't be the current Wal-Mart employees who benefit. Wal-Mart would replace their old workers with new workers, and start competing with CostCo for those higher wage workers.

But then you're subsidizing the labor costs of employers who pay low wages...

Ah so you expect the "stressed middle" like most of us to subsidize the walmarts of the world.

Where do you think the money for EITC/WTC comes from?

A tax on corporate profits?

This is just a special case of people not living within their means. If you can't afford a kid, don't have one.

The catch to this line of reasoning is that you might have a perfectly well-paying job when the kid is born, but several years later endure a drastic shift in your professional life that's out of your control.

So I don't know. "Must pay enough to support family of 4" is incredibly arbitrary, and EITCs for low-income families (as another poster mentioned) sounds icky to me, since now everyone else is just subsidizing low-wage employers. Not sure what a good solution might look like.

True. But it goes to a broader social issue. Should a family of 4 where one parent is employed full time by a large organization be earning below the poverty line. Was it like that 10/20/40 years ago. Where will it be in another 10 years? What's the impact on our social fabric.

At the micro level as a rationale economic player you in theory should make that determination. At the macro level it's our job to decide whether we want one income families to be below the poverty line and what are the broader implications of that.

Yes. If that person is a cashier at Walmart. The value added by that employee is simply not that high. They shouldn't get paid more just because we don't want to be poor. If you only make 20k you shouldn't be having 2 kids. If you continue to make poor life decisions, the outcome is living below the poverty line.

Note, that I'm not against helping the poor. Charity is great, and helping people move up is great. Simply telling Walmart they should pay more for the same work is stupid. If you want to make more, you should provide more value.

I think you're taking it for granted that people who have money deserve to be given money, and people who don't have money don't deserve handouts. Which is charity: giving a 1% rise in Walmart's profits to its shareholders, or giving that 1% rise in profits to its workers? What makes shareholders intrinsically more deserving of reward for the company's output than employees? Under what circumstances does Walmart giving money to people not qualify as charity? Why is it okay to legally compel Walmart to give shareholders money, but legally compelling Walmart to give its employees money is unfair to Walmart?

It's really bizarre to call paying people a fair wage charity.

That is a great response, and it really puts things into perspective.

If you're born a millionaire like Paris Hilton, and you capriciously decide to become a large shareholder of Walmart's stocks one day, you... well, you just sit back and watch the money roll in without doing anything. Even though you're providing zero value to society you make a very large amount of money. In this way, not only is clarky07's profoundly and bizarrely misinformed, it is also selfish and offensive.

> well, you just sit back and watch the money roll in without doing anything

I'll be the last to argue that we live in a meritocracy but in your example the capricious heir is in fact providing capital to the economy, taking on the risk that if that business fails the capital is gone.

Actually it's not zero value to society, and you don't just get to watch money roll in. It is providing capital to a business and it is full of risk. If the business fails then the money is gone. The markets play a valuable role in our economy. It is you that is misinformed.

That's true, but the fact remains that shareholders don't really get a larger share of profits than employees because they're more deserving. They get a larger share because they're in a position of power and the employees are powerless to secure a fair share.

Employees don't bear the same risks investors do. They earn their wages risk free, even if they don't generate enough value to justify their pay. They might lose their job, but you never come out of a job with less money than you came in with.

Investors wouldn't take risks if they couldn't reap rewards from them, which means workers wouldn't have the jobs either. The end result would be even less fair.

In any case, the modal investor isn't Paris Hilton or Warren Buffet, it's an ordinary working stiff trying to save for retirement in his 401k, or a pension fund for workers at other companies.

That's a strange way to look at the situation, when you consider the larger picture of a man's struggle in life.

Someone who's working at Walmart does not make a lot of money, they most likely cannot afford to give their children the best education, they cannot afford a reliable car, they're more at risk of failing to make the rent payment due to some unforeseen accident.

Someone who's in the financial position to be able to comfortably invest their money, or is otherwise a millionaire, even if they lose a good few hundred thousand dollars, it will not affect them much. At least, not as much to pose the question of if they'll be sleeping on their own comfy bed or in a homeless shelter.

When you say that people "deserve" minimum wage because that's all of the value they're providing to society, this is what you're talking about. You're talking about putting them in a very shakey position, you're talking about making them borderline-homeless.

If people can't earn enough to support themselves and their families, they should get help from the public. I don't want to see anyone borderline homeless. But it breaks the entire system to say employees should receive profits rather than shareholders when the company only exists, and only works, because shareholders are bearing the risks that the workers either can't afford to or choose not to.

And we're not just talking about millionaires bearing the risk, either. About half of Americans own stock one way or another.

> If you continue to make poor life decisions, the outcome is living below the poverty line.

What makes you think everyone who's poor got there from making poor decisions?

Just because someone says that A implies B, does not mean that any B you encounter was a consequence of an A.

That is, making poor life decisions will lead you to poverty, but that doesn't mean being in poverty meant you made poor life decisions, and that wasn't claimed AFAICS.

Didn't say that at all. I said if you make bad decisions you will get a bad outcome. I did not say everyone who has a bad outcome made bad decisions to get there. Subtle but important difference.

>The value added by that employee is simply not that high.

The corporation would cease to function without them.

Paycheck is not a measure of value added. Most of the time it doesn't even correlate to value add.

No it wouldn't. There are literally billions of other people capable of doing that job.

While there are exceptions, on average a corporation would pay no more for a person than they think that person is worth, at that point it is better to close the business than continue to lose money.

But paychecks are also capped by the price of substitute goods, such as self-cleaning robots, self-checkout and other mechanical help, as well as alternatives like reduced hours or staff.

I guess the question is partly

"does the market value the work being done by that one wage earner enough to support a family?" and partly

"should the state step in and support a family when the market value of their labor is insufficient to support that family?"

And to what level is support needed?

No answers here, just questions.

One-income families of four are only below the poverty line if the sole income earner cannot produce enough value to support a family of four. The problem isn't that people are being exploited and underpaid for the work they do. Maybe it's that the education system has failed to produce more valuable workers: maybe it's that the value of (most) human labor has dipped so far that some level of basic income is necessary.

Nearly a quarter of the US population was officially in poverty in the 1950s. Doing unskilled work as a sole breadwinner with multiple children has always pretty much meant you would live in "poverty."

On a side note, a family of four making $20,000 will qualify for an additional $10,000 in EBT and EITC as well as free healthcare (Medicaid), bringing the wages paid by Walmart and Costco much closer together.

This. WalMart basically receives a huge public subsidy to underpay their employees in the form of welfare costs. Minimum wage and benefit laws try and shift those costs back to the employer.

And if Wal-Mart didn't exist, these people would have no jobs and require even more public assistance.

True, but we (society) wouldn't be much worse off than we are now. If Wal-Mart didn't exist, something else would exist to fill the gap, supply and demand must reach an equilibrium.

We should focus on helping people become self sustainable, not perpetually on the dole. Wal-Mart doesn't help here.

If it wasn't for Wal-Mart, there would be a Wal-Mart shaped niche in the economy and whatever filled it would look a lot like Wal-Mart.

Well society could also refuse to offer those services, it isn't fair to blame WallMart for not paying their employees so they can afford to buy a good we have decided that they should enjoy.

yes your quite right in the UK I have no problem with paying for the NHS et all I do have a problem with subsidizing crap employers "jumped up fucking caterers" as John Clese memorably called them.

The problem with your suggested strategy is that societies that follow it are headed for evolution's recycle bin, to be replaced by societies that don't.

This. One of the things people undervalue is the fact that at least some of the US's success comes from being a big populous country. Dominating the world in science and warfare isn't a let capita sort of thing. Absolute numbers and absolute wealth help.

Well, actually if all poor people followed this logic, then all children would grow up in more affluent households. Then the next generation could afford college, and all of the nice things that come with having parents that have money.

But of course, it seems that only the poor people want to reproduce anyway.

Except college is a negative sum game, an expenditure of resources to boost one's relative status at somebody else's expense; it was a ticket to money when few people had a college degree, but the more people who have one, the more find you can have a degree and still end up poor.

And as you say, affluent people typically behave as though they don't want to reproduce anyway. In some cases that's actual lack of desire, and in others it's because by the time they finish climbing academic and career ladders and jumping through all the hoops, they're too old, but the end result is the same.

Except not really because there ARE literally thousands of companies who want software engineers right now, but there are not enough of them to go around in the United States.

This is only going to get worse as everything moves from manual labor to software. We will need more and more developers and less janitors, less cashiers, etc.

In 50 years there will be very few unskilled jobs. And they'll probably be something stupid like clicking ads or filling out surveys full time.

> This is only going to get worse as everything moves from manual labor to software.

True, but there's an interesting twist. As more people are hired to write software and build computers, some of those people create robots, the robots take over more of the unskilled jobs, which further accelerates the process.

Maybe, but isn't programming pretty much the only job where there is such a shortage these days? It's also a job where the product is pure information, so I'm still of the opinion the solution to the problem is to drop the requirement for physical presence and start hiring remotely.

It's less than "only the poor people want to reproduce" and more than "people wanna reproduce" and "so many people are becoming poor these days".

The middle class is GONE, and the lower class has grown immensely. So as a proportion, sure, they reproduce more. But that's just because we've grown so many of them.

This isn't entirely accurate. The shrinking of the middle class is accounted for entirely by movement into the upper-middle (and higher) income classes, and what you say about the lower class ignores per capita data.

I don't want a world where people consider their own income before having children and find that they can't afford to have children and not live in poverty, and have to miss out on having children.

Restrutoring your argument:

>I don't want a world where people consider their own income before going on a trip around the world _and_ find that they can't afford to take a trip around the world and not live in poverty, and have to miss out on traveling the world.

Everything, including children, are a cost. Is it not better that people look at the cost before, rather than after, they make a purchase? Especialy with something as important as a childs wellbeing.

Anyway it takes a lot less money to raise a family than you might think it does. My grandparents raised my mother on next to nothing, my parents raised me on very little initially.

From the opposite end of the spectrum: If everyone could have as many children as they wanted regardless of any outside consequences, wouldn't that be just as harmful or not more?

> especially two.

Or for that matter, three, since the statement seems to be assuming 3 children and one adult (if there was a second adult, why would it be a single-earner household if they are under the poverty line that way? Surely the other adult should at least be on welfare or disability...)

Also, people with children to support should refrain from being laid off and having to find lower paying jobs.

They should...but if everyone did that we'd have much less population growth. Most people, particularly lower classes, don't particularly care.

I don't have a citation, but it's kind of self-evident. At the very least, people don't expect a family to cost so much, and think if they're prepared for it beforehand they'll be fine. You can't be prepared for poverty with a family.

Also, single earner household? Its not 1950.

Low-skill workers might make better use of their time/money to dedicate one parent to raising children full-time instead of what many dual-earner households do which is send their kids to pre-schools, summer camps, and daycares, and then hire a variety of household helpers.

Also, I think our society should still be structured to allow a single earner on minimum wage to support a family of four, without going on welfare of sorts. It's really complicated though, and for every argument supporting one side of this argument you can always find a really good rebuttal.

Our society is structured that way, except for the "without going on welfare" stipulation. A sole breadwinner with a spouse and two children making $20k will receive another $10k in EBT and EITC, free healthcare, and pay a tax rate close to 10%. Effectively his or her income will be above $30k, which isn't bad considering per capita GDP is only about $45k.

How could society be structured to guarantee higher wages to unskilled workers?

I'm not sure about your comparison to per-capita GDP there.

What you just described is a family of 4 with a total income of $30k+.

Per capita GDP of $45k means that GDP per 4 people is $180k. That $45k number is per person, not per worker.

So either the claim is that $30k is not that bad compared to $180k (unclear, a priori) or ... something?

>The median household income in the United States was $44,389 as of 2004.[9][dead link] The median income divides households in the US evenly in the middle with half of all household earning more than the median income and half of all households earning less than the median household income. According to the US Census Bureau, the median is "considerably lower than the average, and provides a more accurate representation."[49]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_...

As it happens, the _median_ household income is about the same as the _mean_ GDP per capita in the US right now. That's because incomes typically have distributions in which the mean is a lot higher than the median, as your link notes. Note that GDP per capita is also higher than mean per-capita income for people because there are non-household components of GDP (e.g. you would need to count unrealized capital gains as income to get closer to "income" approximating GDP).

I agree that household income is a more interesting thing to compare to for this case, though, but even more interesting would be comparing to similar households. Otherwise you're comparing the income of our hypothetical family of 4 to the incomes of 1-person households, incomes of households containing just a student, incomes of households containing one or two retirees, and so forth.

Luckily for us, such information is out there; http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/statistics/4perso... lists the median family-of-four income in the US at $67,000 or so in 2005 (though by state the median ranges from about $50k to about $90k, which shows the problem with talking about aggregate "United States" numbers). http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/Fam_Inc_SizeofFam... has similar numbers for a few years later... http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/househ... has quite a bit higher numbers than that for 2011 ($75k median nationally), which is a bit surprising to me, actually.

None of which answers the question of how reasonable an income of $30k is for a family of 4, of course.

Maybe the dad stays home, or it's a gay couple, so it's modern single earner.

Unless I have been grossly mislead, if singer-earner salaries had appreciated like CEO salaries from the 1950's to now one parent could afford to stay home or just work part time. I don't know why it should be necessary for both persons of a marriage to work full-time on average.

Being a single-earner household is a luxury and a 20k/year household cannot afford it.

There are always going to be shit jobs meant for teenagers that pay wages good for teenagers (cashiers, part-time lifeguards, sandwich assemblers, etc). If an adult tries to support 3 other people with such a job, they are going to have a very difficult time and that should not surprise or disturb us.

You aren't going to get companies to scale their pay based on what the individual employee needs. If you did, would McDonalds have to pay the fry chef with 7 kids more than the fry chef with 3 kids, who is in turn paid more than the 19 year old fry chef who is trying to pay for community college and car insurance? That would be absurd. If you think that somebody needs to take up the slack, you need to look to government, not corporations.

Supply-and-demand.

As women entered the workforce, this created more supply, which drove wages down, which forced more women to enter the workforce. Similarly, two-earner households could outbid single-earner households when purchasing real estate, which also drove the need for a two-earner household.

This transition is not reversible. However, it only happens once (excepting polygamy).

20k is on the low side, but one should still consider their own income before having children, especially two.

I don't think people are concerned with the wage earners as much as they are about the welfare of their children when they say things like this.

20,230 is what is reported by the US Government: http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes412011.htm

So the number stated is the mean, not the mode or median.

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