It would also be interesting to see how a welfare payments compare to minimum wage over time. My impression is that they're even less than minimum wage, currently ~$300 per child per month. That isn't just poverty, that's destitution.

We should also remember that raising minimum wages makes it more difficult to find a job and raises unemployment.

Your premise that a full time worker making minimum wage _should_ be able to support a family at poverty level is, frankly, wrong.

And this statement shows a complete lack of understanding of even the most basic economics, lisa: "Raise the minimum wage and people will choose to work. "

If you raise the minimum wage to $1000/hr, I'm sure everyone would want to work for that wage. The fact is, employers will simply cut positions if they have to pay people $1000/hr. I'm not going to hire someone to clean my bathrooms if I have to pay them $1000/hr. I'll just suck it up and do it myself, or maybe hire illegals who will work for $7/hr. Voila, a job is lost. You agree with this basic premise, right?

So you also must see that if you raise the minimum wage, then, in general, employers will decrease low-skilled positions. Raising it $0.50/hr won't be as drastic as raising it $1000/hr, but it has the effect of causing positions to be eliminated. These effects are born most directly by the unskilled and the young: the very people that the minimum wage is designed to help! Please realize this. It's not a fairyland where McDonalds will keep employing the same number of people if you double the wage they're expected to receive.

Minimum wage is actually a horrible idea that has the terrifying attribute of sounding perfectly sensible to those who haven't studied basic economics or managed a business.

It would be far, far, far better to invest in freely available vocational training and career counseling to improve peoples' skills, rather than keep them employed at artificially high wages. For that matter, it's a much better idea than welfare, too.

The minimum wage needs to be raised along with everything else. It wasn't raised for years. The reason was supposed to be "it would cost jobs, blah, blah, blah". But everything else kept going up.
Never mind supporting a family, you can't even support yourself on minimum wage. People working for minimum wage qualify for food stamps. That's just taxpayers supporting coporations which pay minimum wage.

i had a small "mom and pop" restaurant. i finally got to the point where i had 2 waitresses to help with the work. they were happy and i was happy. they raised the minimum wage and i had to let one of them go.
this is basic economics right? it's the way you run a household budget. if something goes up you have to cut back somewhere else if your income doesn't go up.
minimum wage jobs weren't meant to support a family - they were entry level jobs or supplemental jobs. now keeping people @part time status with little to no opportunity for advancement and paying wages that just barely get you by and don't offer affordable benefits. it's not the way to do business.

Unemployment will rise! is the threat everyone trots out whenever it's suggested that the minimum wage needs to get raised. But the fact is currently 30 out of 50 states already have a state minimum wage higher than the federal minimum wage and, prior to the current economic crisis, none of their job markets collapsed.

Another false argument is that the majority of minimum wage workers are teenagers or those not otherwise relying solely on their minimum wage job to make ends meet. The Department of Labor Statistics reported that for 2008 24.5% of those earning the minimum wage were 16 to 19 years old. a) this certainly does not constitute a majority and b) although this group obviously does include high school kids working summers and weekends and living at home, it also includes 18+ adults who may indeed be supporting themselves. Or at least attempting to.

Hey hey, fellow commenters, broke person checking in. I would just like to quibble with this part of the original post:

if people choose to go on welfare instead of work

Is social assistance actually comparable to minimum wage in the States? And will either give you enough to live on? Because they sure won’t here. We need to raise both minimum wage and social assistance. Let’s do the math!

If I were working full time at minimum wage (currently $9.50 here), I'd make about $1748 a month before taxes. I'm not sure how much it'd be after taxes. Let's be wildly optimistic and ignorant of Canadian tax law and say $1650. That still won't put me above the poverty line, which is about $21,666 for a single person in a large urban centre.

But if you think that's depressing, let's talk about welfare! The maximum amount of social assistance I can receive per month is $572. That's a third of minimum wage before taxes.

My rent and bills alone come to $534. (Never mind about food, laundry, transportation, student loan payments, chipping in for household expenses, looking professional till the first paycheque comes in, replacing stuff that wears out. $1.22 a day should be plenty, right?)

Also, I'm Canadian, so under this scheme, health care is free. Please take this into account when calculating what percentage of the population may, in good conscience, be kept in utter destitution in a modern, wealthy, industrialized nation. Show your work.

*$21,666 per year. $1650 a month translates to $19,800 a year.

Last week, I joked with my mother that if I had teenage children they would probably be selling crack.

I have been working as a server for the last two months.

As a writer, and aspiring activist and scholar it was incredible to feel like a zombie after serving burgers and beers for four hours, or a double shift.
Serving, wiping, cleaning, entering orders, scraping dishes, dealing with managers favoritism & power moves.

It took this gig for me to have a fundamental understanding of the ways in which parents in general and single parents specifically are screwed, as a hell & gas drawls.

The health care, education and labor policies are made by people who have never done wage labor, and they will only change when THOSE of us who have done this kind of work ARE making the rules.

In response to the "raising wages means less jobs" argument, in addition to the great rebuttals already posted: the ways in which many European countries placed regulations on their labor markets has meant that the effects of the current economic crisis have been softened. From the NY Times:

"Advocates of greater economic openness have long argued that Western Europe’s rigid labor laws are a barrier to growth and a source of inefficiency. Now that U.S. unemployment has overtaken the level in the European Union for the first time since the early 1980s, they contend that flexible labor markets will enable America to recover faster than Europe.

But the crisis is prompting a reconsideration. The countries that have done best to soften the blow are those with a tradition of social partnership among employers, trade unions and government. Those include the Netherlands, Germany and the Nordic countries.

Political support for further economic openness has evaporated as governments try to shield their citizens from the financial storm. In fact, Giuseppe Bertola, an economist at the University of Turin, says flexibility-oriented changes enacted over the past decade, which raised the employment rate, have contributed to a more rapid increase in unemployment in Europe during this crisis than in past downturns."

@mary ann blackwell

That's strange that raising the minimum wage affected your waitresses, since waitresses don't make minimum wage. They are considered to make most of their money in tips. For example, in New York minium wage is $7.15 while minimum wage for servers is $4.30. And that's one of the better ones. A lot of states didn't increase min wage for tipped workers. I worked in michigan where it is $2.65 and it ain't gone up, and DC where it was $2.13 and just this month increased to $2.77.

So I highly doubt that you had to let one go cause of the mean ol' increase in minimum wage when your waitresses were making their money off tips, not you. or, ahem, bullshit.

Allowing 15 million low wage workers to enter the US illegally is a massive drag on low tier wages. Arguing about minimum wage rates is folly if you do nothing about the illegal immigrants pulling down wages. Supply and demand...

@opminded

Capitalism requires the cheapest labor possible.

The American labor economy is rooted in forced free labor and/or slave labor.

Enslaved Africans, imported Chinese Immigrants, Japanese immigrants and today's Mexican immigrants are par for the American course.

There will always be low wage laborers in the United States, the economy requires it.

Ummm. You people DO realize that raising minimum wage only gives people more money, for a short time, in name and not in fact, right?

I don't know where some of you people have been, but minimum wage has risen several times in my state from the 4.35 it was when I started working while in high school, to 7.25. Granted, this has been in small increments over the years, but, with each of these changes, the prices of basic goods has gone up as well. Within a few weeks of minimum wage going up, the price of milk, bread, and other staples with prices I've memorized has increased. I've been on a tight budget for years, and have only barely made my way to hanging just above the poverty line, so I keep close track of the cost of food and groceries.

Tell me, please, how increasing the price of labor won't increase the costs of production, leading to an increase the cost of products, making any raise in minimum wage useless? Inflation, anyone? People used to work for a few cents a day and products cost less than a dollar. Just because you make literally more an hour than one of those turn-of-the-century people, do you have more buying power? No. 10.00 an hour is only worht more that .50/hour IF it actually increases your buying power... which, when you factor in the raise in the costs of production and the costs of products which go up each time minimum wage is raised, makes your raise worthless.

So in response to the comment about minimum wage not affecting the restaurant owner, you're not factoring the higher costs of raw food materials, and non-tipped employees, like cooks, managers, and the third party maintenance (plumbers/electricians people called in to repair items (can't raise minimum wage without raising the per hour rates of other workers, as it would make them angry to be left without a raise). Also, without her specifying that her state, how are you to know that minimum wage didn't increase for tip-earners?

The bottom line is that raising minimum wage just makes everything more expensive, making it necessary to raise everyone else's wages, making things even more expensive, meaning that minimum wages earners haven't really gotten a raise, at all.

>> But the fact is currently 30 out of 50 states already have a state minimum wage higher than the federal minimum wage and, prior to the current economic crisis, none of their job markets collapsed.

No one is arguing that a $0.50 cent rate hike is going to blow up the job market or economy. There are negative things, however, that can happen that don't equate to the "job market collapsing". For instance, if 5% of minimum wage workers were to lose employment, that would be an extremely negative thing. Let me remind you that these workers are generally already the least skilled and the least connected to various job resources.

I repeat my earlier point from like 10 posts ago:

Instead of having society spend money paying unskilled workers higher than they're worth (i.e. a minimum wage), which every single economist will tell you has significant adverse effects, and which as shown by this post doesn't even bring workers above the poverty line.... why not phase in expenditures on a significant expansion of freely available vocational training and career counseling?

Sorry, just because someone chooses to forego education and training to pop out 3 kids at age 22 they're supposed to get my sympathy when they can't find well paying work?

I'm not even a parent and I know nobody "pops out" kids.

Statements like "every single economist will tell you" lets us know you don't know what you're talking about. If "every single economist" agreed on anything, there would be no discussion.

Duran,

The training and career counseling would be great if our society was not degenerating into a "Gimmie" culture. I work on a college campus and have seen the attitudes of many younger, entry-level workers - there is no correlation in their understanding between effort and hours worked and pay/rewards. I have seem some call in "tired" or for more frivolous reasons, even those who are trying to earn money to help support children. The common idea seems to be "pay me for doing the bare minimum, but make sure to pay me a lot for it... or I'll just walk off to the next entry level job, stay for a few months and do the same." Many of these people also get money from mom & dad, and still can't make ends meet because they are buying rims for their cars, but can't make child support payments.

Add to this the fact that people DO get the option to apply for welfare when there are children involved, and to them it takes less effort to take the $$/child in addition to any other cash coming in, than to take part in work training or counseling.

This does not apply to everyone - I know lots of hardworking people struggling to make ends meet - I have been one of them for ages. I have had friends work as dishwashers, waiters, harvest jobs for 12/hr days 7 days a week, ad I've worked my way up from every job I've had, from department store stockroom to management, to reception to main designer at a newspaper. It takes a lot of time and hard work, AND an education to get out of the minimum wage bracket. This is why I DO NOT have children - I can't afford them, and won't ask anyone else to pay for them.

In a Gimmie culture, people don't want to work

Angela, that is spot on with what I've witnessed with my generation. I'm 24, working at my second job in my career path, and I have seen sooooo many of my peers take exactly that attitude. One of my coworkers, who is 26 and on his fourth job since college, shows up to his 9-5 job around 10 or 10:30 each day, and often misses days because he's hungover or hits the snooze button until past noon.

The attitude of doing the bare minimum possible (or often less than the minimum), expecting to get paid highly for it, and repeatedly switching jobs is very common. I'm glad my parents made sure I knew that wasn't ok.

I'm also a bit confused by the graphic's determination of the poverty line, as it seems to put it at about $22,000.00, per year. I've been hard pressed to make above that on my own, but have never considered myself living in a state of poverty... Only in the last 2 years have I rated above that line, actually, and I've been on my own for 13 years, and been working in my actual field based on my education for 9 of those years. I could afford food, but not to eat out often, basic entertainment, and about once or twice a year I'd buy clothes to replace older items (Goodwill actually has pretty good clothing if you take the time to look). I could not get myself lots of electronics without saving up for them, or go on even small vacations without putting aside money for a few months prior to the trip, but I was living within my means.

I "Googgled" the phrase "Poverty Line" and ended up with an amount of 14,000 for a 2 person household, which is what I'm living in. Even while I was the only breadwinner for my household, I know I was above that line, even if only just.

I guess it just seems strange to me, again, that the solution isn't the same as people living during the Great Depression. My BF's grandmother has never been in debt, and still holds onto and reuses everything she can, because she learned not to be wasteful, and to stretch money as far as possible. If you couldn't afford something, or work out a reasonable payment plan, then you didn't get it. Done. Instead, today, we have rent-to-own stores, credit cards and all other ways of living beyond our means, of increasing the amount of money spent beyond the money earned, and also we have a culture that feels entitled to have cool things at all times. I think we live in one of the only countries where even poor people have cell phones, electricity and television.

I think instead of just upping minimum wage, which I and others have already pointed out to not be a solution, we need to rethink our attitudes and ideas about the world and our place in it. I don't exist to have things given to me as a "right". If I want or need them, I earn them. If I overextend myself by spending more than I make, or through having a larger household than I could support, I'm not going to ask anyone else to give me money to take care of it. We've lost the idea that people do not deserve things simply for breathing, that the government will not take over (should not at least) to fill Mom & Dad's shoes and continue to give you an allowance, that you take responsibility for getting yourself an education - the amount of financial aid and grants out there is crazy - there is almost no reason for many people not to complete college with at least a bachelor's degree, making it less likely they will stay in the minimum wage bracket forever.

I would like to give you an example of my family situation. This is because many of the commenters here do not realise exactly how varied the recipients of minimum wage and benefits actually are. They are not all young, they are not all uneducated. The benefits trap (as it is called in the UK), where working leaves you in a worse position than unemployment, is very, very real and a big problem that raising the minimum wage is probably one of the few ways it can be tackled, aside from changing the attitude towards who is elegible for work and who is not in ALL areas.

My father and mother both worked before they started a family. My mother stopped working when my eldest brother was born, to care for her child. That was ok, my father was earning enough to support his family without it being a struggle. My father was a plumber, and a very good one at that. Had he continued to be a plumber, things would be fine right about now as plumbers can earn upwards of £30,000. But he couldnt continue because my father's back one day gave in, and he was so badly injured he was bedridden for some weeks. He never did recover from the slipped disk, went through a few painful and innefective operations to fix it and is left permanently disabled. As the sole earner, this was pretty bad times. He was on incapacity benefit for 5 years, and in that time he DID go back into education, he DID get a degree in a field he could realistically pirsue with a bad back injury (computing) but when he was ready to return to the workforce, he was in his middle 40's, disabled and with no experience in his chosen field. The best job he could get barely earnt him more than £13,000. fastforward about 8 years, and my father gets made redundant. My mother, of the same age, has never done much more work than part time jobs between children. No one would employ her, and with eye problems leaving her partially blind, there was pretty much no hope of her getting a job. My father tries desperately to get back into work, and takes a job that pays just £12,000 a year and gets made redundant again after two years due to the recession.

He is now 55. He is educated, intelligent and capable. He is very willing to work. He is also unhireable in most peoples eyes, due to his age and his disability. he will never get a job that pays enough to live on.

And you think education will just solve this problem. Its pretty disgusting how many of you seem to think that people who earn minimum wage or are unemployed for long periods of time are partly to blame.

Wow, this thread is just full of classist, ableist, generational, etc. assumptions.

If you see some co-worker (regardless of what generation s/he is in) not working hard, you can turn your head and see one who's working harder than s/he is getting paid for. And for God's sake, being lazy is not GENERATION-SPECIFIC.

If you see someone who gave up education, don't assume it's because SHE (and yeah, Duran, your comment was sexist because you talked specifically about whoever was "popping out" the kids) felt like being irresponsible about sex or whatever other assumption you've made. People give up education because they can't afford it, because they have an ailing family member, because they have a work opportunity that they can't give up for whatever reason. You don't know why someone didn't pursue higher education. I'm all for education, but not everyone can give up 2+ years of their adult life to study.

Apricotmuffins even brought up a point many of you seem to have missed: plenty of people also can't get good jobs BECAUSE THEY'RE DISABLED. Physically, mentally, emotionally, whatever. You ever try to get better than a minimum wage job or welfare if you're, say, severely bipolar? Suffer from a pain disorder? Especially if you can't afford proper treatment? What about someone who can't get a good job because s/he has to take care of a loved one who's disabled?

How about those who can't get out of poverty because they were RAISED in poverty? If you've been on welfare since you were a kid and were educated in a school that couldn't get anyone into college and half your classmates were drug dealers, I'd say getting an honest, minimum wage job as soon as possible sounds like a step up. Oh, but no, people who work 40 hours a week at an honest job don't deserve to be at or over the poverty level because they're stupid, lazy, bringing down the system, etc.

Stop blaming the poor. For God's sake, stop blaming the poor. The system hurts EVERYONE poor, both hard-working/smart and lazy/selfish. Stop assuming all the poor are the same. The system is broken and it needs to be fixed, and we as civilized human beings need to do everything we can to try and fix that system. I like how Tlonista put it:

"...what percentage of the population may, in good conscience, be kept in utter destitution in a modern, wealthy, industrialized nation[?]"

Tlönista you are missing some points. That "poverty" line you list is for a family of four while your welfare payments seemed to be based on a single individual who is perfectly healthy. So they aren't directly comparable.

"Granted, this has been in small increments over the years, but, with each of these changes, the prices of basic goods has gone up as well. Within a few weeks of minimum wage going up, the price of milk, bread, and other staples with prices I’ve memorized has increased."

Are you really trying to state that inflation is in line with the minimum wage? Because they aren't even close. From 1980 to 2008 the minimum wage has increased from $3.10 to $5.15 an increase of about 40%. Meanwhile the price of bread (one of your staples) has increased over 400%, the cost of a home has more than tripled. The American dollar itself? For what $100 dollars bought you in 1980 you would need approx. $240 today.

Inflation occurs regardless; there is no reason for people earning the minimum wage to be loosing purchasing power.

okay, the only comment i have on any of this really is about welfare. i don't know how it is in other states, but i was on welfare when i lived in hawaii in 2003/2004, and attempted to apply here in louisiana at one time a few years ago when my child's father left.
in both states, if you receive welfare, you are under a mandatory requirement to participate in job training they provide or some form of work for atleast 25 hours a week. you have to turn in paperwork from any potential employers by certain dates. if you do not do this, your welfare payments are cut off and you're not eligible to receive again for a certain amount of time. also, the maximum you can receive welfare is 2 years. which is why it's not called "welfare" any more. it's TANF - Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
when i applied in louisiana in 2005, i was only doing it to supplement my own income waiting tables, but decided against receiving it because it wasn't worth the extra 25 hrs a week to only receive a little over $100 a month. i'd also like to add that i did have my sister to watch my little girl, so i wasn't paying for a babysitter at the time, either.
oh, one other thing -- i have been in the past and am currently a server. in louisiana the going rate is $2.13/hr and it's been that for YEARS.

I'm not trying to come down on people who actually have experienced hardships beyond heir control, causing them to be in need of aid. Needing to care for family members is a growing problem as the older generations become more dependent on the younger, as grandparents end up raising more of their children's children, and other family members picking up the slack when others can't work. These are not the people who irritate others at crying the loudest about being poor.

I have known women in my state who actually get pregnant ON PURPOSE to milk the state out of welfare money, AND continue to have children not only to get higher checks, but also to keep from having to go back to work. And then they don't even look after their kids - going out and partying night after night. I should be asked to foot the bill for these people? Do YOU feel like supporting that?

While there are plenty of people who can't (or feel they can't) escape the system of revolving poverty, there are far too many who take advantage of it, and have no desire to get out of it by taking responsibility for their actions. In contrast, I know people working 2 jobs to make ends meet while going to school, (one is a single dad of only 22). I know people who save and save to go to college. Being from a poor family and on my own at a young age, I only got to go because early on I realized I needed to earn a scholarship to attend - so I worked hard, got a good high school GPA, worked on my standardized test scores and made darn sure I got one - and I did and it paid for all but one year of my schooling, which I am paying back now. I'm the first woman from my family to make it through to a 4-year degree, all without "popping out" a few illegitimate kids like my aunts and cousin. I didn't get caught up in drugs like another cousin, or party my life into revolving rehab. Don't talk to me about people who try but can't go to school because of money - I know people in the Financial Aid department here on my campus, which serves a financially disadvantaged region - there are scores of loans and grants for people to apply for. There a decent jobs here on campus, and I know some employers around here are desperate for workers who don't steal, who actually work and don't do or sell drugs. I have two friends who have been going for years and a proud to be close to graduation after working as cooks and servers in a small-time restaurant working 30 hour weeks while attending full class loads - and they deserve to be darn proud.

How can I take away from their effort by supporting the ideals of others who have not put that same effort into getting through school, maintaining a job? I'm not talking about people who have gotten ill, or through the bad economy lost their jobs, or surprisingly found a family's responsibilities dumped onto them. My issue is with those whom I have directly observed not giving a darn because they know the State will support them, so why should they try? Enough sour apples spoil the taste for any others. I don't doubt people are justifiably unable to support themselves. My problem lies with those who are able but not willing. They are the ones depleting the support that should be going to those who actually need it.

Also, as I said, raising minimum wage will only alleviate a few symptoms for a short while, until inflation catches up with it all too quickly (also, no one has told me how raising the price of the cheapest labor creates cheaper goods - not that a wage raise will not in itself cause inflation, but it is part of the cycle) - it WILL NOT solve the problems of the lower wage bracket. How much should we raise it? At what point will it allow people to live out of "poverty"? And then, how do we adjust the wages for skilled labor, for those who DID manage to go to school, or have more specialized training? Because you can't say minimum wage is $12/hour gross for a 40 hour week (based on the poverty line on the chart above) without upping everyone else's wages to reflect their training/education/seniority, which as I have stated, will make that raise worthless. Give me another solution that will actually work.

Angela, sorry, but I'm still taking issue with a couple of your points. Your anecdotes aren't swaying me, because you're still using them to generalize unfairly.

"Don’t talk to me about people who try but can’t go to school because of money...there are scores of loans and grants for people to apply for."

That's great--I think we all know there's money out there for people who want to go to school but can't afford it. But God knows it's not easy to get. Poor kids have to do 10x the paperwork/applications of rich kids to TRY and get that money, IF they're even advised properly on how to get it (these are usually uninformed teenagers we're talking about, AND high school counselors are notorious for being horrible at their jobs). And even if they get it, it's often not enough and/or requires them to come up with "whatever they can afford" in addition to it, which means work study or a regular job once they're in school, when their rich classmates can focus on their studies and end up on the higher end of the grading bell curve...the poor kids are still working harder just for the fact that they're poor, so this isn't an even playing field. Ever. And what about the kids who have parents who CAN afford to send their kid to school but refuse to pay? Yes, this happens quite often, and no, these kids can't go to school because their family doesn't qualify for financial aid. Going to college is very, very hard in America because it's ridiculously expensive and finding ways to pay a bill you can't pay is never, ever easy.

"How can I take away from their effort by supporting the ideals of others who have not put that same effort into getting through school, maintaining a job?"

Who says that trying to change the system that treats ALL of the poor is taking away from anyone's effort? If you work your butt off and succeed, there's no reason you shouldn't be proud. But not everyone can, and not every kid who was born into a poor family SHOULD have to work 10x harder just to keep up with his/her rich classmates. It's an unfair playing field. The fact that some friend nastily milks the system for all its worth means you should hate him or her, not everyone in that same poverty bracket. The welfare/minimum wage system is for all of us, including you, including me, if we need it. Your taxes are paying for a system that's for everyone who needs it, including YOU.

The system needs to be fixed. And the answer is NOT that some poor people need to stop being lazy, because they're not the major reason the system doesn't work. The system was flawed from the beginning...which was what the original graph was showing us, I thought.

I was trying to say that I DO NOT hate or dislike everyone in the "poverty bracket." I was saying that I have been there, and have done my best to tread water to get just above it.

I think the system needs to be restructured so that leeches are not taking money from those who earn it, and keeping it from those who actually need it. I think the simple suggestion of raising minimum wage to address the problem is naive at best, and does nothing to address the "pay to stay in welfare" mentality that I've seen (not people I call friends, by the way). It should be enough proof that the system is not working that even a few people with the lack of moral character who would use their children simply to garner extra cash to support an irresponsible lifestyle are able to get away with it.

Again, I know there are people in legitimate need of help. My main point has always been on this posting is that raising minimum wage as the OP suggested and others have also endorsed will have other consequences tied to it, that will negate the benefits of the very action you are supporting.

I apologize for speaking in anecdotes, as I find it easier to speak in terms of specific examples than in simple abstracts and basic sterotypes. I have never spoken ill of those with disabilities, those born in poverty or those who find themselves defacto parents/supporters of their families. I HAVE said that in my experience working on a college campus, I see plenty of those able to go to school, able to work but who decide to coast, to live off mom, dad, the City, and the State, to not take responsibility for their actions and whether they bring children into the world, as in their minds someone else will always shoulder the burden. When they decide to work, or are coerced into it, it doesn't last - they drift from one minimum wage job to another, bemoaning the idea that they can't find better jobs with better pay and better hours. They seem to want rewards for accomplishments they have not achieved. These are the people with whom I am frustrated. I see them as milking the system that should only be used to help the people who actually need it.

I never called poor people lazy. I called lazy people lazy.

We have a half-decent minimum wage over here in the UK, along with nationalised health care and, while the situation isn't perfect, I would much rather continue to live here than try and live on the equivalent minimum over in America.

I am in a pretty tight financial situation - low wage employment, I would struggle to pay the rent, taxes, and basic monthly bills on my wage alone. But the thing is, I work 40 hours a week and take home just shy of £1000 every month, which is equivalent right now to what... $1700 roughly? In addition, because our government considers that I am earning below an acceptable amount for my household's needs, I am entitled to receive reductions in my tax and financial incentives from the government to supplement my income from its current level to £1500 a month, roughly. Equivalent to approximately $2500. More than enough to cover my basic living expenses and this allows me enough income to stock my cupboards with fresh produce rather than cheap crap.

The 40 hours a week I work leaves me enough time to come home, cook a meal from scratch for my family (no readymeals packed with chemicals!), take in some physical exercise for my health, get the housework done and spend some time studying at home to better myself, as well as getting enough sleep that I am not sleep deprived. My health is good, and if I do get sick I can get free medical care and not have to worry about my earnings, since employers here have to give sick time.

If I lost my job I would receive benefits that would provide me with enough to live... but certainly not to the standards I am living to now. I would need to cut out fresh fruit and vegetables, and would likely need to look for cheaper accomodation. I would definitely rather work than live off of benefits, and I feel proud knowing that 20% of my income every month goes back to the government that gives me so much. I feel like I am making a contribution.

In America I would probably be working 60 hours a week and still struggling to pay basic living expenses. I wouldn't be able to afford fresh vegetables or have the time to cook them, I would be too exhausted and tired to exercise for my health and would be sleep deprived. I would have to choose between doing the housework and getting enough sleep, and would struggle to find the time to study to better myself. And if I got sick, which is more likely when one cannot afford to purchase fresh, healthy food and is so stressed, would I be able to afford the medical insurance that would entitle me to health care?

Raising the minimum wage may pinch big companies a little bit, but the long-term societal benefits are huge. Angela; the lazy people you mention do not sound like poor people struggling to live. They sound like spoiled children of middle-class parents who can always rely on mummy or daddy for help. Such people are really, wildly in the minority - and really, personally I would rather see those sort of people waste an extra £10-£20 a month of booze if it means that 10 or 20 struggling families are also getting that extra money. We shouldn't penalise hard-working people out of fear of a minority of people whose behaviour we disagree with.

I've worked around minimum wage, sub $10/hr, for about two dozen different jobs over my teens and 20s. Despite hitting 110+hrs/week on 3 different occasions, one in Calgary in steel toes without sleep or rest over 7 straight full time manual labour shifts....(you want to die).

If I were on welfare it would solve almost every problem I have in my life. I would be figuring out right now a heuristic for optimal interest rates to optimal export-oriented stimulus capacity (for once free interest rates end).
But Obama and my PM are dummies about weed. IDK any local dealers and can't afford hookup I do know. I'm cheering 29% unemployment and the Iraqing of USA infrastructures instead. Oh well. Why aren't tea baggers using autoweapons? Boring. Falling asleep. Civil War II or STFU.

Bunny, in America there isn't even public transit to get to many of the day labour jobs that have kept me alive. Some of their State have a 5 yr lifetime welfare quote, which is incredibly progressive. In Canada my most marketable skill is probably as the bioterrorist who wipes out our civilization in the future, seriously. I don't want that but if the choice is ever back in a bed buggy (need sleep to apply for work and ID) homeless shelter or killing Obama's and Harper's children with Phil-bioterror bought by Osama, those little fuckers are going to wheeeze then die.

Angela. Me thinks you are white, able-bodied, cis-woman, aren't ya. WOman, people aren't poor because they want to be poor. Your bubble. Tires me.

You know, the funny thing here is the number of middle-classed people jumping around in response of this post with "the increment will cost US!!" because the idea of them paying more is outrageous.

Now, no one hasn't still addressed THE ACTUAL point of this post. That poor people, actual poor people can't make a living out of the minimum wage.

Let's just think a moment people, people having minimum standards of live is more important than your claim that only hard-workers deserve to be middle-classed like you.

Now, I pretty much disagree with "raise the wage and people will chose to work", really. Like the problem here is people not choosing to work, a lot of people work two jobs and can't feed their family, let alone working people on welfare.

No one should be on welfare unless they have a mental or physical dissability. If that statment was put to action, I assure you that more than half of the poeple on welfare would be off of welfare. With that being said, the people off of welfare would need to find work elsewhere. Most likely taking jobs that pay minimum wage, and if the money coming from that job doesn't suffice their needs then they should take a second job. This is AMERICA! The country where everyone is established as equals. Example: Benjamin Franklin, who is also known as 'The American Dream', worked his way up from being a poor kid, who worked at a newspaper, to being America's first millionare. If people are not willing to work for what they recieve then they should not recive anything, because anyone,who works,can be successful in this country. Hard working tax payers should not have to pay for lazy people, who will not work.

i agree

Jessica, I would like to point out that I work - as a single mother. My children are not yet school age and I am lucky enough to have the option (I live in Australia) to stay at home with them. One of the things that the patriarchy has done very succesfully is undermine the value of work considered to be the province of women - such as childcare, whether your own children by staying at home, or by working in a childcare centre. By saying that only people with mental and physical disabilities should be on welfare you show a lack of understanding of what it is like to try and find work that pays enough to support your family. I am not unqualified. I have completed 13 years of schooling (up to year 12 here, not sure how that translates to the US schooling system), and have qualifications in hopsitality supervision and business administration. Since becoming a single mother I have tried looking for work and to be honest, it costs me money to work. By the time I factor in childcare costs (even subsidised) and travel I end up loosing too much money. I believe apricotmuffins mentioned the benefit trap? That is the situation I find myself in. The way our benefits work here I would have to be able to go straight into a job paying a around $AU50,000 to actually make money and be able to afford a basic standard of living. By basic standard of living I mean being able to pay the rent, utilities and buy healthy food for my family. Surely that isn't too much to ask?
As an explaination of how that works, I currently recieve $AU1068 a fortnight from the government. That keeps our head above water. Just - without our vegie garden and cooking everything from scratch it would be a lot harder. If I go to work and earn that same amount I then pay tax which takes it down to about $AU1000 say. I would be working about 4 days a week to earn that. Daycare (with subsidy) is at least $20 a day, so there is $160 a fortnight gone. Add in the rent ($540 a fortnight) and there is $700 gone. Add in transport costs at $5 a day if I can use public transport so $40 and I've spent $740 just to be able to work and have a roof over our heads. In summer I spend $70 a fortnight on power (no aircondtioning, just running the fridge, freezer, washing machine, lights, stove, hotwater and computer), I get by on $100 a fortnight for food. Already I've racked up $940 just to live with the basics. That leaves $60 to pay off any debts, or contribute to savings, or pay for extra healthcare (the govt covers most things but some things have to be paid out of pocket), or put towards being able to study...
I get that that is more than a lot of people have. I KNOW I am very lucky to live in a country where I have the choice to stay at home and raise my own children. But I just wanted to point out how very hard it can be to get yourself out off welfare and into earning and supporting yourself. I also wanted to point out that raising children is a valid choice - I see it as the governement paying me to do an important job.

Duran brings up the old "Raise minimum wage to $1000/hr..." line.

Nobody has ever seriously suggested raising minimum wage to $1000 (or even $50) per hour. The idea of a minimum wage is to provide at least a subsistence life for those who work.

Then comes the bit about how "minimum wage is actually a terrible idea..."

In an ideal society, I would agree that a minimum wage is a bad idea. But we live today in highly regulated societies. Ideally, if someone's labor is worth only, say, $1 per hour, employers should be able to pay them $1 per hour. Similarly - and here's the rub - builders and landlords should also be free to build and rent housing affordable to the $1-per-hour worker.

But our regulated societies protect incumbent property owners from a free market and do not allow housing of the quality available to the $1 worker, and rather imposes middle class housing standards on everyone, whether or nota person can afford it.

I would couple minimum wages to minimum housing standards - neither or both. So if you want a free market in labor, a free market in housing is a prerequisite.

Some of these charts need to be about 50% larger. My eyes aren't what they used to be and will be eye more tore up after straining to gleam details of these tiny graphics. Please enlarge! Thanks.

I am a single father with a BA in Philosophy. After several years looking for work, I realized I was not going to find a high paying job with my degree. With this understanding came a nervous breakdown. I began seeing a therapist who helped me recieve benifits. I now recieve 1300 dollars a month disability, hud housing , and many other entitlements ect. I live in Colorado in a 1200 square foot mountain A frame near Conifer. I pay 300 dollars of the 1200 dollar rent payment and take on freelance writing jobs and sell firewood to bring in additional income. I shop at Whole Foods and pay for organic health food with my 400 dollar foodstamp card. I have plenty of time to home school my daughter, read Nietche and go on hikes. Say what you wil about entitlements but for me it spells FREEDOM.... Now lets watch a Republicans head implode taking in that bit of info lol ...wait I also use medical marijuana
and drive a Prius .)(()())))))))))))))))

I agree, by lowering welfare payments, you are making people suffer needlessly more. Raising minimum wage would not only help those in poverty rise above the poverty line and encourage less dependence on welfare, it would also increase spending ability, which could help the economy, possibly.