The answer to $15.00 Hour fast food restaurant wages

[kamik86]

Let's put it this way...

Livable wage should be when a single person working at the grocery store full time won't need food stamps to buy her own groceries.

Her job should pay enough for her to eat instead of asking the tax payers to help via food stamps

Ok so if the wage is that a single person can't get food stamps:

http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/eligibility

For 1 person that means they can't have an income over $1276 a month. which assuming a 4 week month and 40 hours a week (you said full time) goes to just under $8 an hour. So where did $15 come from?

I'm ok with a minimum wage of $8. However my state is already at $10. So no one that works a full time job here should qualify for food stamps unless they are trying to support a family on that minimum wage job.

 

[Tiggeroo]

These threads are useless. One side will never convince the other and they become snarky. This issue is not black and white. Big earning, large corps have made billions on the backs of the working class. Amd if they aren't making enough or have to clean up environmental problems they leave the country. My grandfather was a barely literate 1st generation American. He grew up in slum housing with many siblings. He left high school to enroll in WWII. He worked in manufacturing and security all of his life and my grandmother, in between children was a waitress. They were able to afford a home in a working class neighborhood, drive a nice used car, sent their children to Catholic school well fed aND clothed and took the family to the shore for a 2 week vacation every year. My grandfather was a hard working man but no angel. He did nothing differently then today's minimum wage workers. His neighborhood was filled with people like him. The heads of his company were certainly much wealthier then the workers. But nothing like the scale today. Oh and he and his family had work provided health insurance and he retired with a pension that he paid in to. He was not unusual for his generation. He would never be able to learn to program computers or get a college degree. And he certainly couldn't afford it. Hard working Americans should be able to support a family. A young adult should be able to work part time in the winter and full time in the summer ad be able to keep a roof over their head while paying for college. Amounts of executive pay and shareholder profits should increase but not percentages.

 

[Colleen27]

Let's put it this way...

Livable wage should be when a single person working at the grocery store full time won't need food stamps to buy her own groceries.

Her job should pay enough for her to eat instead of asking the tax payers to help via food stamps

While I agree, I think housing is a more practical frame of reference than food. Food in America is cheap. But if you need a roommate to afford a studio apartment, can't afford more than week-to-week in a fleabag motel, or are spending 50%+ of your income on rent, you're not making a living wage even if you are earning too much for food stamps.

 

[declansdad]

Still haven't seen an answer to this:

If you currently work in a skilled position at $15 per hour and the minimum wage is increased to $15 per hour would you be happy that your wage was the same as the person working in the unskilled position?

 

[mefordis]

I don't get why everyone thinks $15 / hour is a lot of money. I don' think that's a lot of money to earn per hour.

One result of increasing the wage to this amount though, is that employers will expect a higher standard of worker, though. I think the min wage employees need to keep this in mind.

 

[Christine]

Still haven't seen an answer to this:

If you currently work in a skilled position at $15 per hour and the minimum wage is increased to $15 per hour would you be happy that your wage was the same as the person working in the unskilled position?

No, but I believe that raising the minimum wage up elevate everyone eventually. There has been wage stagnation far too long here and it's because of large, billion dollar corporations willfully eroding our wages and benefits with no controls on them. It couldn't hurt to increase the base, minimum wage tied to inflation/housing. I believe that other industries will have to follow.

 

[kamik86]

While I agree, I think housing is a more practical frame of reference than food. Food in America is cheap. But if you need a roommate to afford a studio apartment, can't afford more than week-to-week in a fleabag motel, or are spending 50%+ of your income on rent, you're not making a living wage even if you are earning too much for food stamps.

Posts like this tell me that a $15 min for the country is way overkill. My mortgage, not an apartment. That is 3 bedrooms and 1.5 baths and has a fenced back yard. Costs me less than $1000 a month. Oh and that includes PMI because I didn't want to wait to save up a down payment. In this area saying you need $15 an hour to live would be ridiculous.

My husband works at Target so him and most of his friends there make well under $15 an hour. None of the ones without children seem to have a problem affording this and having some spending money (except for those couple of slow times in a year where everyone's hours get cut, they do lose their fun money for a bit then). Its only the ones with 2-3 kids that really have a problem.

 

[Christine]

Posts like this tell me that a $15 min for the country is way overkill. My mortgage, not an apartment. That is 3 bedrooms and 1.5 baths and has a fenced back yard. Costs me less than $1000 a month. Oh and that includes PMI because I didn't want to wait to save up a down payment. In this area saying you need $15 an hour to live would be ridiculous.

My husband works at Target so him and most of his friends there make well under $15 an hour. None of the ones without children seem to have a problem affording this and having some spending money (except for those couple of slow times in a year where everyone's hours get cut, they do lose their fun money for a bit then). Its only the ones with 2-3 kids that really have a problem.

You are probably correct that $15 would be great in some areas. $15 per hour, for a 40 hour week is approximately $31,200.00 (assuming a person works 2080 hours a year). Where I live, you could not even rent a 1 bedroom apartment on your own with that salary. My DD makes about $15,000 more than that. She has no student loan debt, but does have a small car payment of $250. She is struggling to find a room in a group house for $800-$1000. That is all she can afford so that she can live. If she can get close enough to her job, she will be getting rid of the car to make it more affordable.

 

[mefordis]

Still haven't seen an answer to this:

If you currently work in a skilled position at $15 per hour and the minimum wage is increased to $15 per hour would you be happy that your wage was the same as the person working in the unskilled position?

I think I would work to get my wages brought up, not to push other's down.

 

[wvjules]

No matter what the minimum wage is, there are always going to be people at the bottom that feel that they deserve more. And as we've seen people can't agree on what is livable. I really think there should Be no federal minimum wage. Let states set their own.

 

[mom2rtk]

Still haven't seen an answer to this:

If you currently work in a skilled position at $15 per hour and the minimum wage is increased to $15 per hour would you be happy that your wage was the same as the person working in the unskilled position?

Of course not. We all get a raise. I get a raise. You get a raise. Everyone gets a raise! And it all comes out of profits. And inflation does not occur.

 

[mom2rtk]

No matter what the minimum wage is, there are always going to be people at the bottom that feel that they deserve more. And as we've seen people can't agree on what is livable. I really think there should Be no federal minimum wage. Let states set their own.

I agree with that, but maybe with a floor set by the federal government. But then, maybe that's the system currently in place.........

It's crazy to think that X dollars in one state is the same as X dollars in another state. It varies way too much.

 

[Goofy_Disney_Dad]

I don't think $15 an hour is viable across the board for minimum wage throughout the country. I do think it needs to be higher than what it is now though. I only looked at this very quickly so I may not understand how it works completely, but I like how Canada establishes minimum wage by jurisdiction. It appears that there is a low of $10.45 an hour in BC and a high of $13.00 an hour in Nunavut. Those numbers seem to be much more realistic in the living wage scenario we're discussing. I'm assuming cost of living and other variables play a part in how that amount is established and I think a more geographic based system might work well for the US.

 

[Christine]

Of course not. We all get a raise. I get a raise. You get a raise. Everyone gets a raise! And it all comes out of profits. And inflation does not occur.

I personally don't feel that way. I feel like, for what I do, I'm pretty fairly compensated. I can look at others and think that maybe they are not. If lower end workers get a bump up (and not just in fast food), I don't personally feel that I need a raise also.

 

[kamik86]

No matter what the minimum wage is, there are always going to be people at the bottom that feel that they deserve more. And as we've seen people can't agree on what is livable. I really think there should Be no federal minimum wage. Let states set their own.

Even being set by the state makes areas where the wage is much harder then others. I live in MA which means where I live (far western part of the state) gets the same minimum wage as Boston. Which makes minimum wage quite nice here compared to what things actually cost.

Honestly I think alot could be solved by making many of the tax breaks and federal cut offs tied to smaller demographic areas.

Another thread is talking about student loans. I got through ok but I know someone from Long Island that got screwed. If you look at his FAFSA without checking his address it seems his parents make quite a bit of money and knocked him out of eligibility for a lot. Except his parents live on Long Island so hadn't saved nearly what they thought his parents should have.

 

[declansdad]

I think I would work to get my wages brought up, not to push other's down.

So in order to be paid what you feel would be relative to your value, training, skill set, experience, etc. you would ask for a raise. Which if given, would further increase labour costs and start the cycle of each level in the pay scale looking for a corresponding increase.

 

[mom2rtk]

Even being set by the state makes areas where the wage is much harder then others. I live in MA which means where I live (far western part of the state) gets the same minimum wage as Boston. Which makes minimum wage quite nice here compared to what things actually cost.

Honestly I think alot could be solved by making many of the tax breaks and federal cut offs tied to smaller demographic areas.

Another thread is talking about student loans. I got through ok but I know someone from Long Island that got screwed. If you look at his FAFSA without checking his address it seems his parents make quite a bit of money and knocked him out of eligibility for a lot. Except his parents live on Long Island so hadn't saved nearly what they thought his parents should have.

But someone living on Long Island lives in an area where pay is higher than other areas of the country where cost of living is lower. You can see that in this thread talking about police and medic pay levels. You see it in threads here that come up about teacher pay.

 

[declansdad]

I don't think $15 an hour is viable across the board for minimum wage throughout the country. I do think it needs to be higher than what it is now though. I only looked at this very quickly so I may not understand how it works completely, but I like how Canada establishes minimum wage by jurisdiction. It appears that there is a low of $10.45 an hour in BC and a high of $13.00 an hour in Nunavut. Those numbers seem to be much more realistic in the living wage scenario we're discussing. I'm assuming cost of living and other variables play a part in how that amount is established and I think a more geographic based system might work well for the US.

There is also a push all across the country to move to a $15 per hour minimum wage as well as a guaranteed income for everyone.

 

[FlightlessDuck]

Part of the problem is that the minimum wage was not changed in accordance with inflation. The minimum wage of $1.60 in 1968 would buy the same amount of goods as $10.90 now.

http://www.raisetheminimumwage.com/facts/entry/amount-with-inflation/

That, of course, is on average.


Except for paying for college. You can't work minimum wage and pay for college.

 

[declansdad]

I personally don't feel that way. I feel like, for what I do, I'm pretty fairly compensated. I can look at others and think that maybe they are not. If lower end workers get a bump up (and not just in fast food), I don't personally feel that I need a raise also.

Part of determining fair compensation is looking at what other positions are paid. If the lowest pay scale received a bump that put them at the same level as the next group up, human nature would make most people think they now deserve more pay as they are no longer being fairly compensated.