Income Disparity

I do not feel comfortable divulging personal financial information to complete strangers, but I’ll try to answer in loose terms. My income is sufficient to cover the gas I need, food, rent (which includes utilities), and a few creature comforts. Additionally, I home and feed a small, beautiful cat, and so have the additional costs of food, hairball prevention treats, and litter for the cat box. If I lived in another place, the money I make might not be sufficient, as cost of living differs greatly from place to place around the country, but as is, I do just fine. I have some savings set aside for my future, and I also have that money making more money for me while it sits there waiting for me to be old and grey.

Putting quotes around the word necessity does not mean those necessities wouldn’t be practical. Practicality is a pretty subjective term in this context, which is the point that has been explained to you multiple times, in one way or another.

Screw them all and their earnings of $8 an hour…not my problems. They’ll just have to invest in the stock market with their savings like Mr. Reasonable said, no electricity and rice eats only.

Wendy, I applaud your concerns and desire to find solutions. Don’t give up but maybe narrow your focus a little. Remember? I’m the one who said keep it local, small scale and doable.

Okay, so why do people have children that they cannot support?

#-o #-o #-o You had to go there didn’t you? I did my best to avoid that issue but no, YOU hadda drag it out. #-o #-o #-o

OK

  1. Prolly 90% of all live births are OOPS! Anyone who says different is lieing.

  2. The ultra right conservatives are against any kind of birth control. “Keep 'em barefoot, pregnant, and in the bedroom or kitchen.”

  3. Various religious groups discourage the use of condoms, and suggest the failed rhythm method to control population.

  4. In certain states, the designed lack of facilities to correct unplanned pregnancies contributes to unwanted live births.

  5. Supporting a child is an afterthought in the heat of the moment, assuming any afterthought.

There are dozens of other reasons but these are the obvious. You do realize that each of these plus others deserve their own thread with numerous pages of back and forth and a year from now… #-o

I should add health and car insurance, I pay for both of those as well.

Wendy - one of the points I am trying to make is that individual median income doesn’t define people as poor. Median household income is a better measure. Single income families is a problem. There are causes unique to those families and solutions unique to those families. It’s a point about using the stats most supportive to your point. There are solutions other than simply waving a wand and granting everyone a $50,000 income, because there is a price to pay for everything. And this is a conservative position, by the way.

What’s not so conservative is universal, taxpayer supported health care, which doesn’t add to anyone’s income but which takes away an expense. Both sides of the lever matter.

Okay, but it’s worth pointing out that single mom families represent a lot of poverty. Are we doing everything we can to force dads to pay the freight? Are we making it too easy for irresponsible people to have kids? Should people have the right to bear four kids that they cannot support? Or to father them? If they do and should have that right, do we then complain that we have so much poverty or do we just accept it as a result of all those rights?

Why would single income families get preferential income treatment to a single individual? Sure, you can throw programs for childcare and food stamps at such situations, but why would they earn a greater income for the same work being performed?

Wendy, if you’re question is directed at me, you should know that I don’t understand that question. Can you rephrase? Is it a rhetorical question?

This thread is about income disparity, right? That’s what I am talking about, a person does labor and they are paid such and such for their labor. My concern is not to go delving into every aspect of their personal choices, I just want a working individual to earn a fair wage and whether she or he has kids is another issue. No decent income equals poverty. Kids just make the hole of poverty ever so much deeper.

wendy, surely you must realize that it is much more difficult for many single moms to earn a decent income than for, say, a married couple with kids.

Are you saying that whatever job one has - picking cotton or working at the laundromat or whatever, they should be able to make 50 grand a year? How would that be accomplished?

The answer to each of your questions is no, but you already knew that. The only solution I can see that actually might work amounts to societal revolution. It would entail personal responsibility at every level, and that isn’t a likely scenario. Hold fathers fiscally responsible. Literally, a license to have children. Proof from both parents of the ability to support and raise each child. They have no procreation rights not granted by society. Government must provide the assets and oversight capabilities to enforce all of this.

Do we just accept the poverty as a result ? Well, we have so far and it hasn’t worked very well.

But it isn’t hard to see the shitstorm such measures would create. The only other possible solution would be compulsory reversible sterilization at, say, 10 yrs of age. This could be reversed when a couple was able to prove their ability to support and raise a child to adulthood. Either solution has about a 1% chance of ever being put in place.

Can you hear the screaming at your place? It’s so loud here I’m getting a headache.

I never said $50,000, but would shoot for $40,000 hoping to end up with $30,000. This wage hike would be accomplished by way of less greed which would equal less profits for company owners, pay cuts for CEO’s, upper management, and middle management, and less influence for majority shareholders in companies gone public, simple 1, 2, 3. This would not happen due to acquiescence of the horribly greedy parties at the top who have already been mentioned, but would be doable with labor dept. wage enforcement swat teams. Employees who ratted out their employers greed would be monetarily compensated by company profits which they were denied through their work environment. Trust me, it’d be easy breezy. Repeat offending companies could be seized by the government like they can seize whatever they already want to, just in this case companies would be seized and auctioned off without missing a beat for a good reason. :mrgreen:

Companies that only profit themselves more than the people of the country can be replaced, which would also hold them to higher public safety standards, but that’s another thread.

No, make higher education and job placement help available for all participants free of charge which would solve the problem of them finding work and earning a decent salary and would also automatically qualify them for free family co-parent planning, parenting assistance, and medical maternity costs once they work for 5 years.

Isn’t it about helping people onto a track that enriches their lives and the lives of their offspring?

Okay, so you’re on to me, tent. Again, I am trying to make the point that there isn’t just one cause of poverty in america and so there is not just one cure. Raising minimum wage to $15.00 won’t cure poverty, but it will help. Some large companies, such as Target, see the handwriting on the wall. Fast food chains can surely afford it. It can happen.

But here’s a story. Friend of mine lost his factory job. Place closed down. He took a job as less pay, also in a factory. His salary is subsidized, so for now, he’s making what he used to make. I’m not sure where the money comes from - the state or a manufacturer trust fund. It doesn’t matter, because either way, the general public is paying the freight, either in taxes or in higher prices. He was also eligible for job retraining. He chose not to. Felt he was too old to begin again.

That’s okay - he’s a big boy. Soon enough, the subsidy runs out. do we bemoan his reduced salary? Do we say that there should be no subsidy unless he retrains, so we are not in the same situation when the factory he now works in shuts down?

As a society, we have to make up our minds. Do we subsidize with no strings attached (this is common in my state)? Do we require that you have to be more than a victimized laid-off worker to get the subsidy? Do we skip the subsidy and just offer the training?

The thing is, his salary now contributes to “poverty” stats. Why should we worry? He chose not to try for a better paying job. So he makes about 11 bucks an hour, now. His wife makes 40k. They own a home and they’re not in danger of losing it. I think they own it outright.

Stats are stats, but there are stories behind the stats. There are tons of anti-poverty programs. There are countless combinations of family size, social resources, incomes, assets, costs of living. One percent, 20 percent, eighty percent.

Everyone hates the 1% except for their favorite athlete, entertainer or doctor. And Warren Buffet.

How much should CEO’s be allowed to make?

Warren Buffet is a criminal who owns a chunk of the world yet lives like a pauper. He hoards wealth.

$12, 332. :evilfun: Why are you worried about those CEOs who swim in money and not those poor single mothers and what they are allowed to make? Pay your employees well, provide safe products and work environments and I have no problem with them earning big money, but don’t shortchange the backbone of your company…your employees, your consumers, or the Earth’s environment.