That Title Image has “my monthly numbers” plugged into it. There would be a bit more of “a cushion” for me at a hypothetical $15 an hour wage, than the current Oregon Minimum (where my hypothetical “mad money” is shown in green) — but god-forbid some sort of emergency happens (like the dental surgery for my difficult to reach root canal; like travel and down-time to attend to a cancer-ravaged love one; like picking up the loose ends and endless expenses, when that love one eventually passes away). god-forbid, any of THAT ever happens!
god-forbid that a person making the Minimum Wage, dare aspire for “better things” in Life (like the hobby of travel and photography, like daring to get a College Degree, like one day achieving the American dream of Home Ownership). Dream On, industrious ones.
We’re taught that “It’s good to have Dreams” … but to those actually trapped by their limited incomes — most of them just learn to “settle” for the down-graded dream of “one day owning their own car” … (or perhaps even their very own “cell-phone plan”) ...
by Mike Kilen, The Des Moines Register -- November 10, 2015
DES MOINES — Heather Costello of Sioux City works for $7.25 an hour, the federal minimum wage. For 40 hours a week, she presses meats into Lunchables on an assembly line at Tur-Pak Foods in Sioux City.
She's single and 39. Her weekly balance sheet: She brings home $250, pays $30 for transportation to her job through an employment agency, $25 to settle a debt, and roughly $84 a week for the rent-subsidized apartment she just moved into. That will leave $111 for food and, someday she hopes, a car.
[...]
Debate rages on
While the debate rages on, Iowans such as Patsy Butler of West Des Moines struggle to make it. The 59-year-old lifelong manufacturing employee is working for a West Des Moines plant on the assembly line for $9 an hour with no benefits.
Out of the $1,150 a month she makes, Butler says $900 a month goes to the lot rent for a trailer she owns, utilities, gas and a student loan. The remaining $250 is to buy food. She’s on her adult daughter’s cellphone plan.
[...]
So how much does that $9.25 an hour, full-time, bring in over a year?
$9.25 x 2000 hrs = $18,500 Woo-hoo! Roll out those 401-k plans … Where do I sign up?
Let’s see, an $18 a month contribution, ought to cover it. Retirement-city, here I come!
There is one presidential Candidate, who actually believes that personal dignity, begins with a dignified wage.
He knows how hard it is to survive on, let alone thrive on, a mere subsistence-wage (having grown up in that lower end of the family-wage spectrum). He knows first hand, what a raw deal that so many hard-working people of America, get year after toilsome year …
Bernie Sanders -- Issues
Millions of Americans are working for totally inadequate wages. We must ensure that no full-time worker lives in poverty. The current federal minimum wage is starvation pay and must become a living wage. We must increase it to $15 an hour over the next several years.
We must also establish equal pay for women. It’s unconscionable that women earn less than men for performing the same work.
Millions of American employees have been working 50 or 60 hours a week while receiving no overtime pay. That is why Bernie has been encouraging the Obama Administration to ensure that more workers receive overtime pay protection. The Administration’s new rule extending that protection to everyone making less than $947 a week is a step in the right direction. It is a win for our economy and for our workers.
Lastly, we must support and strengthen the labor movement to ensure that workers have a say in their own economic futures. That’s why Bernie has been a strong supporter of the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for workers to organize and bargain collectively.
Key Actions
• Proposed a national $15 per hour minimum wage.
• Led the effort to increase the minimum wage for federal contract workers to $10.10 an hour.
• Introduced the “Workplace Democracy Act” to strengthen the role of unions and the voices of working people on the job.
• As mayor of Burlington, was a strong collaborator with unions.
• Leading the fight in the Senate for a $15 an hour minimum wage and a union for fast food workers, and federal contract workers.
Barely Surviving is fine for some.
Others want to Let the actual Living begin.
Count Bernie Sanders among those 'Others' -- who actually believe in Rewarding the Dignity of Work.
And in a nation, where it doesn’t take ‘an arm and leg’, just to keep a roof over your head …
Bernie Sanders on the Minimum Wage — feelthebern.org
What happens when it takes 120 Minimum Wage hours of toil, just to make The Rent?
Could that be ‘the reason’ behind, that unfathomable mystery of Why so many Homeless Americans … ?
Could be.