Originally posted by: PrinceofWands
Originally posted by: BrownTown
Originally posted by: PrinceofWands
Meh, we're at $8.07 in WA. If the CPI we use included fuel costs we'd be over $10 now. While I'm not a fan of artificial floors and ceilings there's really no alternative in a world run by corporations. Without it 1/4 of Americans would starve to death on the streets inside a year.
since when have 1/4 of people lived on minimum wage?
These are very rough for easy math:
$5/hr (an easy number to work with) equates to about $12,000/yr.
Roughly 12% of American citizens able to work earn under that.
Some states have higher minimums...up to $8/hr, which is roughly $16,000/yr.
Another 7% of American citizens able to work earn between 12 & 16k/yr.
Now, accounting for the number of persons cared for by others, who cannot themselves work (kids, elderly, handicapped, etc) we can estimate that a few percent is added as they would be dependent upon persons earning that wage. This gets VERY close to 25%.
I realize there are other explanations which would drop the numbers, but there are also other explanations which would raise them, so it all balances out in the end.
Uh go look at the numbers again. Less than 2% of workers work for min wage. 60% of those are waiters who work for tips. Where you get 12% of Americans are working for 5 bucks an hour(less than min wage for the past 15 years is beyond me).