Minimum wage now $9 an hour!!!!

Lol. When your parents die you will be stuck with THEIR BILLS!

^^^
Not the target of share the wealth.

A national minimum wadge is silly to begin with and has no bearing on so-called "livable" wage in cities, let alone different states.

As a kid, I didn't make much money as a paperboy.. but I had no real sense of what was required to actually live off and used most of what I earned for junk.

My first real job I only made 7.25hr, barely got by. I was in VT at the time, in a city that was short of housing so rent was a bit expensive (two roommates in a small apartment @1k).

My second job was only 10.00hr even, but I also had % of commissions which brought it up to around 15. Sometimes more (way more) and sometimes less. I lived in a different city in NY this time around. Rent for a studio took $600 before going up which felt like clockwork, ending up around $800 before I left (the lease expired and went month to month which included a rent increase). I barely got by again at times.. but I did have enough to get high speed internet as an extra.

Now, I don't even want to talk about what I get paid. Things could only get worse if I were to be trapped in my home by a horde of zombies without an iota of provisions. My expenses are more yet my rent is almost nothing. Still in NY, just a bit more closer to civilization (outside of the big cities... someplace where people don't treat one another like enemy combatants).

Different cities and different states yield huge differences in what is livable and what the real poverty line aught to be. Setting any national minimum wage is silly. The only thing our national/federal government aught to be doing is taking back our money supply and keeping inflation in check (esp on consumables) without interfering in business practices elsewhere.

For Gods sake, let us produce something and pay those willing to work a fair wage, based on what the quality of their work... not their ethnic background for tax incentives.. not some federal mandated wage but one derived from the community in which they work.

A lot of businesses find it hard to adjust to forced wage increases and inflation at the same time. I find it hard myself with my business, because people always complain I'm raising my price. I'm only raising my price per the inflation rating just like Walmart is I tell them.

I disagree, something needs to be in place to keep people from taking advantage of people. Especially thaose who have paid there do's. You know, like business with high turnover rates. Cut hours to avoid insurance benifits. Cutting work force but requiring more work for less pay. Firing people before pay raises or even retirement.

It distorts a lot of things. It causes prices to inflate and living expenses to increase. The reason California is in dire shit like it is. Living in a nice new Condo on the beach costs exactly the same as living in the desert in the middle of no where with crack heads.

So.... are you making a 300% or 400% profit gain now?

Something like, it cost you $.25 but you charge a dollar?

This middle man shit gets expensive......

Absolutely f**king outrageous!

THis ought to be slashed to 9 cents an hour if they want to get the country back to work.

no. he isn't. he's rather intelligent.

I bet you're the type of guy that would say:

"an employee should never get a set % of what he/she brings into the company... that money doesn't exist and I can only give them $2 every 3 days...durrrrrr"

If you can't afford $9 an hour, then don't hire so many employees.

If you can't afford $9 an hour, how the frick do you afford a computer and internet access?

I have friends/relatives WITH college degrees that have lost their jobs-it all wnet to hell with that Bush bailout, where we gave million $ bonuses to bankers.

I make $26 an hour working full time, & can afford to put my self through Uni, rent a house for my partner & child, & keep us afloat whilst still saving money to put away. the only government assistance we receive is rental pay.

If you're on minimum wage, live accordingly. If you're out of home & still on minimum wage, I'm sorry - but you really fucked up somewhere. It actually isn't that hard to aquire skills for the work force.

so reduce your tip by $1, problem solved!!!!

No, those that flip burgers will get paid more. Everybody else that already makes above minimum wage just got a paycut. Raising the min wage raises prices. So everyone else just got a pay cut.

you are not worthy of being a human being.

It is strange that you get rental pay.

It would be better that taxes on lower incomes were lower and that there was no rental pay.

It is the same here. There are all kinds of low income assistance programmes in The Netherlands.

But why not end them and reduce taxes on low incomes?

so the business owners can take home more money?

The economy grows by having the workers take home decent pay and place their money back into the system by buying goods.

The WORKERS are the majority. And it's the WORKERS who can bring the country back. THE WORKERS NEED TO BE TREATED FAIRLY. Thats how the econ will grow. If more people have money, the need for production/demand grows = creating more jobs.

the aussie understands. I own a business and start at 14 because anything less would be an insult. try living on 9, fuck that. you guys bitch of food stamps but at the same time want to see min wage at $5.

true living wage is 15 an hr. imo even that sucks

Hot damn! No government paperwork!

without "no skilled service workers" the well-to-do and middle class would have no where to enjoy an evening out. I'd almost be all for that...the restaurant culture is ridiculous in this country.

They add tons of value- without the low-skilled-peons, tptb and minions would have noone to corral to serve them.

No its called inflation mr $10,000 an hour.

move your business to china you commie

Sorry, I hadn't logged in, this was me.

I agree - & Australia is working towards that - the problem being we don't really see the benefits until tax time after July. I get taxed around $150 a week, if I wasn't taxed, then I wouldn't need to receive government assistance. It works out in the end.

We get rental assistance because I'm the only person working under this house hold. The Australian government recognises that I'm working towards a better job, & that I have a partner & child to provide for, so they help us out accordingly. (that's the simplest way I can put it - it's really not hard to get government payments here..)

Low income earners receive a tax return once they lodge their tax forms every year. Previous to this year, people earning under 49,999 would be able to earn $6,000 tax free, then pay a small percentage on every dollar after that. Our employers take a larger portion than required out of our weekly pay, to accomodate for taxes - & we receive the excess at tax time every year. I usually get back around $1000.

This year though, low income earners will be able to earn $18,000 tax free, which will make it really easy for low income earners.

Also, whilst I'm on the subject, high income earners (I think anyone earning more than 65,000 a year? I could be wrong) get taxed more if they don't have private health care.

Last Edited by 404error on 02/13/2013 04:16 AM

I have issue with people abusing the system also. Our welfare system would be fine if there weren't so many abuses and would do what it was supposed to do, help people that need it for that time.

BUT..it again comes back to the government. They know about these abuses and they continue to allow it to happen. We have got to start paying attention to what our representatives vote for and how they vote and if they vote to allow these abuses to continue, we need to vote them out.

One of the biggest ones right now, Obama. An illegal alien can get help for college before our OWN citizens and that isn't right. Obama is intent on laws being passed that help illegal aliens get jobs BEFORE our citizens, again, not right.

We have the power to stop this and it is with our voice and our voice is heard on election days. People need to start realizing how important voting RESPONSIBLY is. They need to stop voting parties and vote people because of their history, not what they say they will do in the future. Their previous history is the best indication of their future acts. If people can't vote responsibly and seriously, we are much better off if they don't vote. People have long now ignored the actions of government officials, will only vote certain parties or do not research the actions of the candidates running. Obama's voting record as a Senator made it very clear what he was going to do, but so many didn't bother checking it or ignored it when faced with it. He is not the only one, there are many problem politicians from all parties. The party system is killing our country, without the party system, people would have to at least look into a bit about the government.

I don't like the abusers, but if the government allows it, there are those that are going to keep doing it. It's like if you leave candy within reach of a baby and don't monitor them, it's hard to get mad at the baby when they eat the candy. When our public healthcare is being run into the ground and closing because they are overrun with illegals that aren't even citizens here and our people suffer, that is a problem and there are people in this government that are determined to not stop the illegal problem and the only thing we can do is stop those in our government.

This past election was really about so many important things that were largely ignored and instead Obama and the Democrats told everyone it was about gay marriage, it was about the Affordable Healthcare act, it was about free birth control, etc. No, this past election, the biggest issue was our economy, the fact that our government did not keep an Ambassador safe and has lied about it. If they are going to do that to an Ambassador, they sure will do it to just us regular citizens. It was about this massive debt that just keeps getting worse and worse and again, it was about this economy that is actually worse than it was at the time of the previous election. Mitt Romney was not my choice for President, but Obama had a chance and things were worse, at least Mitt had some business sense and was also not from the very well documented and well known, corrupt Chicago political system. He was vilified by the Democrats because he is rich, well guess what? All politicians are rich, every single one of them. No, he wasn't my choice, but I think he would have been better for this economy and country, than Obama. But the DNC took the focus off of our real issues that needed to be addressed and got people going on gay marriage, "free" healthcare (that is going to cost us a HUGE fortune) and birth control. You bet our healthcare needs to be reformed but Obamacare is not what is going to do it.

People lost focus of what is going on with this country and that is exactly what the DNC was hoping for this time. When the election took place, our debt to GDP ratio was about 105% and that is a record for us and not a good record at all. Obama blamed Bush for the debt, but in all honesty, the first 2 years Obama was in, he had a majority House and Senate and he still could NOT get anything done that he promised. If he couldn't get it done with a majority House and Senate, there was no way he could get any of it done with only a majority Senate.

But most people ignored that little fact.

It all boils down to the government letting these things happen and WE are the ones that put them there and we need to remember we are the only ones that can take them out of office. There is a reason the Constitution starts with "We the People" and not "We the Government". They don't rule us, they are supposed to represent us, which is the huge benefit of a Constitutional Republic. We need to remember they work for us and fire the ones that allow these abuses of these programs to continue, fire the ones that put illegal aliens before our own citizens and fire the ones that seem to stop at nothing to bring this country to financial ruin. We could easily become just like Greece, in no time at all..but people will have gay marriage, free birth control, some type of healthcare and no jobs, no place to live and food will be a luxury. It's time for us to make the government be accountable to us, they haven't been in a long time, even though our government was set up for them to be accountable to us. We aren't requiring them to be accountable to us. One of the first steps toward that, IMO, is term limits for every single elected position. Serving the public and that is what they are supposed to do, was never meant to be a career position. I keep hoping people will start informing themselves on what these politicians are doing and tell them "no more" but they haven't yet. I heard tonight someone say, "looks like the Era of Big Government is coming back" and they were correct. Obama's speech tonight was very, very, very, undeniable, crystal clear, that is his agenda..I wonder how many actually paid attention to that and realized it though?

There will always be those that will abuse the system, but when our government turns a blind eye and allows it, then they become responsible for it and they become the problem. You can't legislate character and abusing the system is a lack of character, but you sure can put a stop to allowing them to keep abusing the system. Our government needs to stop encouraging and rewarding people for abusing the system and we need to make them stop.

Sorry for the rant :) I'm just ready for people to realize where the responsibility lies and do something about it.

No that does not solve the problem. Reducing your tip by $1 does nothing to the company but punishes the worker and takes the money from them.

I didn't know the government of Australia is that rich. Maybe the employers are paying the taxes.

I think you can earn 6,000 euro over here without paying taxes.

Low incomes pay 37% income taxes over here, including welfare recipients, but they have all kinds of assistance programmes like rental pay, to compensate for that.

It doesn't make sense to me.

Last Edited by niphtrique on 02/13/2013 04:28 AM

And it is only getting worse under Obama. Unemployment is actually worse than when Obama took office. The single month before the election, oddly, it went above the rate it was when he was elected the first time..how odd it did that, amid many questionable unemployment figures that just happened to not get reported that one month.

Since Obama has taken office, he has accrued 1/3 of the entire debt for our country, that is just over 200 years old, in less than 4 years. One third of our debt for the entire time we have been a country, in just under 4 years, that is shocking. Not only that, under Obama's Administration our debt to GDP has gone up to 105%, it has never been that high and that is probably a much worse indicator of our economy than this massive debt that will never be paid off. Food prices have gone up like crazy since he has taken office. The other day I bought this bag of lettuce that I buy all the time. This last time, it had gone up $.50 which doesn't seem like a lot, but it was a $.50 raise in price on a product that was $1.30 before. That is a huge, huge increase. Everything is going up like that, the price of food is getting outrageous. I stopped and picked up stuff for hotdogs and chips for dinner the other night. It cost me $20 for hotdogs and potato chips. That is absurd. Bush can only be blamed for so long and that time is long, long passed. Like I said a bit ago, if Obama couldn't get a lot of things done his first two years when he had both a majority House and majority Senate, then there was no hope ever with only a majority Senate.

Taxes here are a nightmare. When I was single and taxed at the highest rate, I paid about 42% of my paycheck to taxes and at the end of the year, I would maybe get $200-$300 back after filing my taxes.

^This man knows what he is talking about.