While perusing The Daily Kos this morning, I ran across this post, which asks the question, "How the hell does someone live on $7.25 an hour?" Which got me to thinking, "Yeah, how does somebody live on minimum wage?"
If you work 40 hours a week at the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, that's $290 a week, $1,257 a month, or $15,080 a year, before taxes. Take out 10 percent for taxes, that leaves you with $1,132 a month. Now let's say you're lucky enough to find an apartment for $500 a month. You're down to $632 left. But wait -- you need a car to get to work. And gas is almost $4 a gallon. If you drive 1000 miles a month, and get 25 miles to the gallon, you're spending about $150 a month on gas. That leaves you with $482. Do you own the car outright? If not, you've got a car loan. We'll be conservative and call that $150 a month. You're at $332. Plus, you still have to pay for phone and utilities -- let's call that another $100 a month. That leaves you with $232 a month for food, clothing, health insurance, car insurance and everything else. It's just not possible!
I'm lucky. As a lawyer, I have the ability to earn a decent living. But a lot of people, due to lack of opportunity, lack of marketable skills or lack of a decent education, are not as lucky as I am. But the real tragedy is that, in the wealthiest, most blessed nation on earth, we can't even see fit to pay workers a wage they can live on. Note that I'm not talking about welfare -- I'm talking about people who are working, full time, but get paid so little they can't even make it to the end of the month. And as a society, we seem to be OK with this. That's just wrong. So to all my conservative friends out there, the minimum wage is not too high, it's too low! We should at least be paying people a living wage.
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