America The Pitiful 4
Let's talk about this minimum wage increase that everyone seems to want except for the government... Here is my opinion on it, you can agree with me or you can hate the idea entirely. Personally, these are all just opinions and you can take them how you want.
Minimum wage is a standard that is set in place so that people are able to survive while working. Here is the truth, we can barely survive as it is. Back, ages ago (and I say ages because it was before I was even thought of.) A man was able to work, support his family, and life was good. Now look at the country today. Both parents must work, and make well more than minimum wage to even support themselves, let alone children. Where did we go wrong? What happened in the world that this evolved so quickly and no one took notice until now?
I don't know, perhaps I wasn't even old enough to know, or it is possible that I wasn't even born when this happened. Things need to change though, that is what I know and an increase in minimum wage is not going to solve this issue. There are those out there thinking, well, if we raise the wage to $15/hr then people will be able to actually live and survive and have prosperous lives. The truth of it: it doesn't matter.
If we raise the minimum wage to whatever amount the price on everything is just going to get that much higher. Housing, food, clothes, utility bills, it doesn't matter what it is, the prices on everything are going to sky rocket, and we are going to be left in the same position we are in today.
At our local pharmacy here in town they sell these awesome little books. They are meant to be a gift for someone's birthday. On the front it states: On The Year You Were Born. Then you can go through and pick whichever year you want. I love to (whenever I get a chance, which is rare) to open them up from random years because inside they tell you what major events happen throughout that year. My favorite pages are the ones that state the average cost on items for that certain year such as a gallon of gas, a loaf of bread, a brand new house, a brand new car.
I look at these prices and I immediately think, wow! Things were so much cheaper back then compared to what they are now. There is no denying the fact that yes, they were much much cheaper. But then you flip through and it will tell you how much minimum wage was as well. If you sit and actually calculate it all up... They were so much better off than we were.
On Aug. 12, 1955 the president signed into law that minimum wage would increase from $.75 to a whole dollar! Wow, that might not seem like much, but here are some of the prices people paid for items: http://fiftiesweb.com/pop/prices-1955/
Average income: $4,137
House: $22,000
Ford car: $1606-$2944
Milk: $.92
Gas: $.23
Minimum wage: $1,560
Now just take a gander at this: http://anitome.com/tag/cost-of-things-2015/
Minimum Wage~ Lowest $7.25 in multiple states. Highest is $10.50 in Washington D.C.
Living Wage for a family of 4 (2 adults & 2 children)~ $15.12 per hour
Loaf of bread~ $1.48
U.S. Postage Stamp~ 49 cents
New Car Price~ $ 32,495
Regular Unleaded Gallon of Gas~ $2.89
Movie Ticket~ $8.34
Median sales price of new house~ $294,300
Minimum Wage: $15,080
I'll do some math for you people:
Between the years of 1955 and 2015 here are the increases:
Average (median) income increase: $52,379- 12%
Living Wage increase: $27,312 (one person)- 6%
House increase: $272,300- 12%
Gallon of Milk increase: $2.83- 3%
Gallon of Gas increase: $2.66- 12%
New Car increase: $29,551- 10%
Minimum wage income (one person): $15,080- 9%
Average dollar inflation rate: 3.69%
https://www.dollartimes.com/inflation/inflation.php?amount=1&year=1955
I just found an interesting article regarding Health Insurance Premiums for a company in the 1950's.
https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v19n12/v19n12p3.pdf
3. Persons enrolling on a nongroup basis usually pay additional amounts, averaging almost $7 a year for individuals and more than $8 for families
Health Insurance Premiums 2015
https://news.ehealthinsurance.com/_ir/68/20152/Price-Index-report-2015_final.pdf
• Bronze was the most common metal level selected by both individual and family health insurance shoppers. Average monthly premiums for individual plans by metal level were: • Catastrophic: $145 • Bronze: $275 • Silver: $323 • Gold: $366 • Platinum: $425
Average Increase: (bronze package): 38%
Now here is where it gets slightly interesting: The basic math shows us that the wage increase for minimum wage rose 9% whereas the average dollar rate rose nearly 4%. The cost of living (house, car, gas) rose between 10-12%, which nearly triples the amount of what the dollar rose. (I will not even touch the health insurance increase!)
Okay so the worth of a dollar isn't being increased with the worth of everything else, and... we must (I underlined must for a reason.) pay for so many more things than what was required back then: possibly car insurance, cable, phone (cell phone), internet. There are so many things that we have to pay now that wasn't needed back then.
This is my biggest fear though about minimum wage increase: As soon as companies start paying their workers more money, they are going to start demanding more money for their products. Just so they can still continue to pay themselves big money. These people are getting richer and richer while the poorer get poorer. So how are we going to fix this? Increasing the minimum wage will not solve our issue here.
I think in order to solve our issue with the economy is not give a huge raise to individuals, but we need to put a cap on what corporations pay their "top" employees. Bonuses should be completely cut out from large businesses top employees. Instead of i.e.: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/18/executive-bonuses_n_837477.html
After skipping bonus pay for two years while General Electric profits were low, CEO Jeffrey Immelt got a $4 million cash bonus in 2010.
Starbucks chief executive Howard Schultz got his biggest bonus ever, $3.5 million, topping his previous record of $1 million.
Clorox CEO Donald Knauss got a bonus of just under $2 million, up over 50 percent from the year before, while Clorox revenue fell by 3 percent.
This is where we need to fix our economy. It isn't even maybe the tax breaks these companies get, (it could be, but this is my opinion) that have broken the economy like everyone complains about. With those three bonuses given to three different men imagine what we could do with that money. That is a total of $9.5 million dollars, for just three people. How many people could be fed with $9.5 million dollars? How many people could that allow to see a doctor? $9.5 million dollars might now sound like a bunch of money when it comes to the entire country, but those are just three people!!! Think of all the other people who have gotten bonuses like these when our economy is crap.
So I think in order to fix our economy we do not raise our wages, but we lower them for the higher class. President Trump wouldn't understand this because... Ta Da how do you think he got rich in the first place...
What do you all think?????
Minimum wage is a standard that is set in place so that people are able to survive while working. Here is the truth, we can barely survive as it is. Back, ages ago (and I say ages because it was before I was even thought of.) A man was able to work, support his family, and life was good. Now look at the country today. Both parents must work, and make well more than minimum wage to even support themselves, let alone children. Where did we go wrong? What happened in the world that this evolved so quickly and no one took notice until now?
I don't know, perhaps I wasn't even old enough to know, or it is possible that I wasn't even born when this happened. Things need to change though, that is what I know and an increase in minimum wage is not going to solve this issue. There are those out there thinking, well, if we raise the wage to $15/hr then people will be able to actually live and survive and have prosperous lives. The truth of it: it doesn't matter.
If we raise the minimum wage to whatever amount the price on everything is just going to get that much higher. Housing, food, clothes, utility bills, it doesn't matter what it is, the prices on everything are going to sky rocket, and we are going to be left in the same position we are in today.
At our local pharmacy here in town they sell these awesome little books. They are meant to be a gift for someone's birthday. On the front it states: On The Year You Were Born. Then you can go through and pick whichever year you want. I love to (whenever I get a chance, which is rare) to open them up from random years because inside they tell you what major events happen throughout that year. My favorite pages are the ones that state the average cost on items for that certain year such as a gallon of gas, a loaf of bread, a brand new house, a brand new car.
I look at these prices and I immediately think, wow! Things were so much cheaper back then compared to what they are now. There is no denying the fact that yes, they were much much cheaper. But then you flip through and it will tell you how much minimum wage was as well. If you sit and actually calculate it all up... They were so much better off than we were.
On Aug. 12, 1955 the president signed into law that minimum wage would increase from $.75 to a whole dollar! Wow, that might not seem like much, but here are some of the prices people paid for items: http://fiftiesweb.com/pop/prices-1955/
Average income: $4,137
House: $22,000
Ford car: $1606-$2944
Milk: $.92
Gas: $.23
Minimum wage: $1,560
Now just take a gander at this: http://anitome.com/tag/cost-of-things-2015/
Minimum Wage~ Lowest $7.25 in multiple states. Highest is $10.50 in Washington D.C.
Living Wage for a family of 4 (2 adults & 2 children)~ $15.12 per hour
Median Household Income~ $56,516
Gallon of Milk~ $3.75
Dozen Eggs(Large, Grade A)~ $2.11 Loaf of bread~ $1.48
U.S. Postage Stamp~ 49 cents
New Car Price~ $ 32,495
Regular Unleaded Gallon of Gas~ $2.89
Movie Ticket~ $8.34
Median sales price of new house~ $294,300
Minimum Wage: $15,080
I'll do some math for you people:
Between the years of 1955 and 2015 here are the increases:
Average (median) income increase: $52,379- 12%
Living Wage increase: $27,312 (one person)- 6%
House increase: $272,300- 12%
Gallon of Milk increase: $2.83- 3%
Gallon of Gas increase: $2.66- 12%
New Car increase: $29,551- 10%
Minimum wage income (one person): $15,080- 9%
Average dollar inflation rate: 3.69%
https://www.dollartimes.com/inflation/inflation.php?amount=1&year=1955
I just found an interesting article regarding Health Insurance Premiums for a company in the 1950's.
https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v19n12/v19n12p3.pdf
3. Persons enrolling on a nongroup basis usually pay additional amounts, averaging almost $7 a year for individuals and more than $8 for families
Health Insurance Premiums 2015
https://news.ehealthinsurance.com/_ir/68/20152/Price-Index-report-2015_final.pdf
• Bronze was the most common metal level selected by both individual and family health insurance shoppers. Average monthly premiums for individual plans by metal level were: • Catastrophic: $145 • Bronze: $275 • Silver: $323 • Gold: $366 • Platinum: $425
Average Increase: (bronze package): 38%
Just another interesting site to visit regarding utility bills: https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/scribd/?title_id=5268&filepath=/files/docs/publications/bls/bls_1197_1956.pdf&start_page=26
Now here is where it gets slightly interesting: The basic math shows us that the wage increase for minimum wage rose 9% whereas the average dollar rate rose nearly 4%. The cost of living (house, car, gas) rose between 10-12%, which nearly triples the amount of what the dollar rose. (I will not even touch the health insurance increase!)
Okay so the worth of a dollar isn't being increased with the worth of everything else, and... we must (I underlined must for a reason.) pay for so many more things than what was required back then: possibly car insurance, cable, phone (cell phone), internet. There are so many things that we have to pay now that wasn't needed back then.
This is my biggest fear though about minimum wage increase: As soon as companies start paying their workers more money, they are going to start demanding more money for their products. Just so they can still continue to pay themselves big money. These people are getting richer and richer while the poorer get poorer. So how are we going to fix this? Increasing the minimum wage will not solve our issue here.
I think in order to solve our issue with the economy is not give a huge raise to individuals, but we need to put a cap on what corporations pay their "top" employees. Bonuses should be completely cut out from large businesses top employees. Instead of i.e.: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/18/executive-bonuses_n_837477.html
After skipping bonus pay for two years while General Electric profits were low, CEO Jeffrey Immelt got a $4 million cash bonus in 2010.
Starbucks chief executive Howard Schultz got his biggest bonus ever, $3.5 million, topping his previous record of $1 million.
Clorox CEO Donald Knauss got a bonus of just under $2 million, up over 50 percent from the year before, while Clorox revenue fell by 3 percent.
This is where we need to fix our economy. It isn't even maybe the tax breaks these companies get, (it could be, but this is my opinion) that have broken the economy like everyone complains about. With those three bonuses given to three different men imagine what we could do with that money. That is a total of $9.5 million dollars, for just three people. How many people could be fed with $9.5 million dollars? How many people could that allow to see a doctor? $9.5 million dollars might now sound like a bunch of money when it comes to the entire country, but those are just three people!!! Think of all the other people who have gotten bonuses like these when our economy is crap.
So I think in order to fix our economy we do not raise our wages, but we lower them for the higher class. President Trump wouldn't understand this because... Ta Da how do you think he got rich in the first place...
What do you all think?????
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