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Originally Posted by AlphaFrog
FOR CHRIST'S SAKE...NO ONE WITH A LEGAL SSN MAKES LESS THEN MIN. WAGE!!
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That's a pretty broad statement and I don't think you can prove it.
In fact, I know you can't.
My four year old grandchild has a legal SSN and she doesn't make anything. She costs a lot, though.
I also don't think you would have to dig too deeply to find teenagers or migrant laborers who have valid SSN's and are being paid less than minimum wage. It may not be legal, but do you really think everyone obeys the law.
I'm sorry I got started here...
Even at $8.00/hr, that's under $17,000 per year
before taxes. Consider how easy it would be for, let's say a single mother with a young child to live on that.
You can talk all you want about politics and higher economics, but it doesn't help that low end wage earner. Even the fairly small inflations numbers are significant -- not to mention $3.00 per gallon gas prices. How long has it been since the minimum wage went up? How much inflation has there been over those years? During that same amount of time, how much has the profit of those small businesses everyone is so worried about climbed?
I know there are no hard answers, that every case is different, but I'd be
very surprized if the percentages didn't end up favoring the businesses over the minimum wage earners.
I'm not making this a political debate or blaming Bush -- this problem pre-dates him and the Republican Congress.
People (including one of my daughters) are struggling. I really have a problem that over the course of X number of years, Congress has given itself X number of substantial raises, and I have to help my daughter with her car insurance payment -- which happened about 35 minutes ago -- because she barely makes enough to feed herself and her daughter. She works her butt off and takes no amount of public assistance.
Sorry. I think the whole debate is shameful.