What is minimum wage?

In Michigan and most of the other states it is $5.15 per hour.

In Oregon, minimum is $7.25 per hour.

$8.00 per hour to start in British Columbia. There is a proviso to that though. The Liberals introduced something called a "training wage" of $6.00 (I believe) for new employees (read young people). Someone else from BC can correct me if I'm wrong on this.

The federal minimum wage is $5.15/hour. In California, it's now $6.75, and the legislation to increase it to $7.75 was vetoed by Gov Ahnold. I'm not sure how people can survive on $6.75 or $7.75/hour in Silicon Valley. At $6.75, a full time job earns $14,040 and at $7.75, a full time job earns $16,120, and that's before taxes.

Try living on U$100.58 a month. Because that's the minimum wage here in Brazil - R$ 260.

Sad but true... And I blame our corrupt government.

c.i., I read a study the other day (and I'm working from memory here) showing that Walmart employees soak up $85 million dollars in public assistance in California alone.

In effect, the taxpayers subsidize Walmart.

And they veto a small minimum wage raise.

Go figure.

boomerang, What's more disgusting is the fact that the WalMart family members are all billionaires (one of the richest on this planet), and they don't even provide their employees with a living wage or health insurance.
Since WalMart does not provide health insurance, the taxpayers pay for their medical care at community hospitals. Something is drastically wrong with this picture.

A blog on WalMart.

"Wal-Mart's War on Health Care

High premiums and deductibles keep more than two-thirds of Wal-Mart workers from participating in the company health plan.

Most Wal-Mart employees cannot afford to pay the expensive premiums and deductibles required for coverage. The average worker would have to pay one fifth of his paycheck for health care coverage at Wal-Mart. On a wage of about $8 an hour and 29-32 hours of work a week, many workers must rely on state programs or family members or simply live without health insurance.

Nearly 700,000 Wal-Mart workers are forced to get health insurance coverage from the government or through spouses' plans. Wal-Mart shifts the cost of health insurance to taxpayers and other employers, driving up the health costs for all of us."

Walmart is certainly not the only company that fails to provide benefits to their employees but the fact that they are huge and that the owners are so wealthy makes them stick out like a sore thumb.

-- a sore thumb that the taxpayers pay to have a doctor look at.

-- or not look at until it festers and causes infection and requires hospitalization at many thousands of dollars a day for the taxpayers.

A single person can live on minimum wage here in MI but if you have a family, it's hard.

In NY the I think the minimum is $5.25.

I recently learned from my neighbor, whose daughter inquired about working at Walmart, that they help their employees apply for food stamps and other forms of public assistance. They also have a "family budget plan" that shows the employee how they can spend their paycheck right there in the store. They tell the employee how much to spend on Walmart groceries and clothing based on family size.