I saw a bumper sticker once that said, "Work hard. Millions on welfare depend on you."
I thought it was harsh, but it made me think about how people are allowed to stay on welfare. Sorry, I know I'm referring back to the first half of the thread here.
I thought the average 3 bedroom home in America was closer to $100,000.
Well people can live on $1000/month in some rural areas if they are careful--they wouldn't have much left over, if anything, after essentials. I would guess that wouldn't cover decent housing, food, clothing etc. in many (most?) areas of the country even for one, much less a family.
But I can believe you can buy wonderful housing for $40,000 in Brazil. Our son and his family are in the Texas Panhandle and recently a house near them came up for sale at about $65,000 and they suggested we move. The same house in Albuquerque would be closer to $200,000 and it was tempting. We didn't move though.
I'm thinking of my daughter who lived alone several years in Palo Alto. She had essentially a small one-bedroom walkup with a small living area and small kitchen that wasn't even particularly nice. $1100/month and that was some years ago.
Anoxia is probably closer to the median when the whole country is considered though.
My First question is why are we not upset that Congress gets to approve their own pay raises? These people make at least $150,000 a year for their "service" to the country and the majority of them are already independently wealthy. Bill Frist for example is a multi millionaire several times over.
When congress was first started they received a Per Diem and that is what it needs to go back to.
My Second Question is when do we stop increasing the minimum wage? When is enough enough? Who is congress to tell me that I HAVE to pay my workers $7.65 an hour? Don't they realize that I will have to increase my prices to cover these wages and that might cause me to go out of business?
The late Steve Schiff, congressman from New Mexico, was one of the most ethical elected officials I have ever known. He disapproved the method of voting pay raises at midnight after the media had gone to bed and refused to accept any raises until after the next election. Then when he was re-elected, he could take the raise as that would have been approved by the people of New Mexico. That would be the answer I think. Whenever Congress votes themselves a raise or additional benefits or whatever, they should not be able to benefit from them until they have gone through another election.
I do think we have to pay a living wage to our elected officials; otherwise only the very rich would be able to hold office. As it is, the wages are so low, our most qualified people often don't run because they can't or won't take the pay cut.
As far as the minimum wage goes, I agree with Saintsfan. If anybody is going to tell me how much to pay my people, it should be a local ordinance and not the federal government. However, the local communities who have made their minimum wage higher than the federal minimum wage have frequently seen negative repercussions both in businesses choosing not to locate there and in general lay offs and higher unemployment.
Anoxia, that is the average, not the actual. In many places the cost is well below and in others the cost is well above. Average takes all of the prices and divides them by the total number of occurences. So average of 1,2,3,4,5 is 3. So you see 1 is lower than 3 and 5 is greater than 3. There are plenty of homes that cost less than $100,000 but that doesn't mean a family of 4 can afford them.
My question is does this family (who are both working at minimum wage jobs) have multiple cars that they are paying for? Cable TV? A computer with Internet Service? IF so, well, those are luxuries. They aren't needed to sustain basic life. You can cut them out and use that money to save for college education.
Saintsfanbrain, the cost I provided was what I paid for my home. I didn't realise it was the average.
Also, who said we weren't upset that congress votes on their own wages? That's part of my reason for being libertarian
Fox, That's the reason I said "in our county."
It may sound rediculous, be there are usually a half dozen homes for sale over a million dollars in our county. I think I saw one for over 3 million last week. ;(
Oh, wow... I see you're in CA. It amazes me what the cost of living is there. I used to live there, and I really miss it
Yes I don't know where all those good job come from in California to pay for all that high priced land and housing, but there are an awful lot of people who live in California including silicon valley.
We've also been hearing good news lately about increasing jobs and lower unemployment rates in our county. It's hit below 6 percent for the first time since the tech bust, and manufacturing jobs have increased.
(When I lived in Santa Cruz, one of the jokes was... "Why did all the deadheads move to Santa Cruz?" "Because they heard there were no jobs.")
