welfare vs wages

[GenuineRisk]

Originally Posted by Danzig

no one is talking about someone 'getting rich'. i get that people need help-but should the amount of help be higher than what can be earned by working? if so, why work? many people won't get rich working either...

that said, i'm all for raising the minimum wage. it's funny, the other day, i saw the clips of neil cavuto discussing his first job, and his wage at that time. adjustments over the years from what he'd made, means the current min. wage should be $10 an hour.
now, i get why they have a fed. minimum. however, this is an issue with doing things on a federal basis. what you can live on in one area isn't close to what you can live on elsewhere.
the current atmosphere in the fast food industry points to serious issues as well. as the govt has ramped up it's assistance, businesses are taking more profits for themselves. mcdonalds alone showed what, $5 billion in profits.
so, just imagine if employers paid a living wage, and the amount of assistance could be cut dramatically. but no, the rich get theirs, and the rest of us support a bloated mess.
what would businesses save in taxes? what would taxpayers save? the system is skewed.
the rich have had their taxes cut repeatedly, they are a former shadow of what they once were. where are the jobs that they're supposed to be creating with their savings? we're in worse shape than ever.

I'm sorry; I wasn't accusing you of anything; just pointing out that the Cato institute was making some pretty big assumptions in their reporting of the stats (as you know, I have a perpetual bug up my bottom about accuracy in the media) and that welfare is likely even less than they are assuming. I agree with you that work should be more financially rewarding than welfare, and it's incredibly effed up in this nation that a 40-hour-a-week minimum wage job won't put a single woman and her child above the poverty line.

The other crazy thing about part-time low-wage jobs like fast food is that it's incredibly difficult for people working them to even get a second job because they are kept on-call (for no money, of course), and expected to be available at the employer's discretion. I'm not necessarily opposed to jobs that do that, but holy cow, they should be paying the employee enough to make up for losing any sort of personal time. A job flipping burgers is not worth that.

I worked fast food as a teenager, and I remember the schedule was done a week in advance and you never knew when you would be working. How on earth is an adult supposed to apply for a second job when they don't know what their hours will be two weeks in the future?

And absolutely I agree with you about the minimum wage needing to be raised. We are a consumer-based economy. If the large working class does not have money to spend, we all suffer.