Here’s the latest sob story about how low the minimum wage is. How appallingly the faces of the poor are ground down into the dust by the cackling plutocrats and their running dog lackeys in the corporate offices.
A single mother of six children finds it hard to make ends meet on 20 hours a week of work.
A terror, isn’t it? And I am not joking, not at all. This is the example being trotted out for how the minimum wage simply must be raised:
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””] Dougleshia Nicholson is a single mother of six trying to survive on minimum wage in Kansas City, Missouri. One of her sons has asthma, and she estimates she’s been to the emergency room for her kids six or seven times so far this year. But her cashier job at Church’s Chicken doesn’t come with paid time off and every shift is essential. “It’s stressful because I basically have to pick and choose what’s more important,” Nicholson tells CNBC Make It. “Of course my child is more important, but at the same time, I have to work and make money to be able to support and take care of them.” While Nicholson, 28, makes $8.60 an hour, $1.35 more than the federal minimum wage, thanks to a recent state increase, she says it’s still not enough money to get by, especially since her hours (and paycheck) can vary significantly week to week. [/perfectpullquote]Well, yes, guess 7 people is tough to keep on that sorta wage.
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Yet Nicholson’s typical 20 hours a week at Church’s Chicken[/perfectpullquote]Now hang on a moment. Is there anyone in the country, anyone at all, who thinks that an adult and six kids are going to live on 20 hours a week of minimum wage work? 20 hours of median wage work? Whatever the minimum wage is, $7.25 an hour or $15? Does anyone, other than whichever activist put this media package together, think that the minimum wage should be high enough that a single mother of six should be able to raise them on only 20 hours a week of work?
Seriously?
This being before we get into whatever we might want to say about the presumed father of those 6 kids. Hey, maybe she’s a widow but we’d still not expect part time work to raise them all, would we? And we’d most certainly not be setting the minimum wage so that half a work week raised 7 people now, would we?
My argument’s not with Ms. Nicholson by the way. That many kids at that age, she’s got anklebiters, not teens. She seems to be doing the best she can in going out to work to feed them. Rather, my bile is reserved for whoever commissioned or edited this piece. Who the hell thinks that this is a useful case to argue for a higher minimum wage?
A single mother of six children finds it hard to make ends meet on 20 hours a week of work.
No Faeces Felix.
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Effectively the complaint is that one human being cannot be supported by 3 hours a week of work. Perhaps this will become possible, but only through increased productivity and technical innovation. The best approach is obviously more free market capitalism.
That one human being cannot be supported *at the level deemed acceptable in the richest large country in the world* by three hours a week of low-grade work.
As a survivor of the Attlee government I could support myself at a level I could tolerate if it was essential to do so on three hours of highly-paid work (not that I have any wish to do so)
You must have been in a tiny minority.
Today a pensioner friend of mine, who with housing benefit struggles on a gross tax free income of 330 pounds a week, not many net 110 pounds an hour nowadays, nor did many manage the equivalent in the late 40s.
Of course standards were lower during Attlee's time than today, in fact they were also lower than during WWII.
The last job that I was paid by the hour was only £50+VAT/hour because the job wasn't worth any more but I have in the past been paid at £110/hour which would be more than £150/hr in today's money. Some time ago I was offered two jobs by two different people which would have involved me being in two different countries at the same time so I 'phoned a guy I knew who had been made redundant and asked him if he was interested and he replied that he didn't take any work at less than £1,000 per day.
My main point is that what I regard as tolerable is somewhat different from what a modern American woman - or journalist - regards as acceptable: that I *sometimes* got paid silly amounts per hour is secondary.
"Struggling"???? On THREEE HUNDRED QUID A WEEK?????????????????????
Edit: PLUS BENEFITS!!!!??????
So, he's "struggling" on, what, FOUR HUNDRED QUID A WEEK!!!!
His rent is 220 a week plus bills, doesn't leave much.
Edit. That is his benefits.