plumsauce - 1:29 am on Nov 20, 2007 (gmt 0)

How do people live on minimum wage?

By giving cash subsidies to fat cat bonused managers and employers.

How is this you might ask.

Well, take for example someone who gets minimum wage and has a credit card.

As the weeks go by, whenever that minimum wage is not quite enough to pay the rent and buy groceries, it is put on credit cards.

As more weeks go by, more is put on the credit card because less is available after making the credit card payment.

This is all in aid of showing up at work every day on time and putting in an honest day's work without ever once saying that's not her job.

The employer got an honest day's work and the employee has to go into debt just to be alive the next day to go back to work again. That debt is pure and simple a wage subsidy to the employer.

The employer regularly trades in his and his wife's Jaguar convertibles for cash, his two sons drive Land Rovers, have wives at home, living in multi-million dollar homes.

The employee in the meanwhile has had to move into a shared apartment while struggling with interest payments of some $500 a month on a debt load of $50,000. I have calculated that it is going to take this person almost ten years to pay off this debt at the current rate. And, yes they have taken additional part time jobs to try to whittle it down a bit faster.

When an employer whines that he cannot afford a raise in the minimum wage, he doesn't own a business, he owns a sweatshop.

This is all in aid of making 100 times the average worker rather than 50 times. At some point, it becomes totally unreasonable.

In aid of changing this, I have a business discount policy. There is a formula, but essentially, if the CEO makes more than 10 times the lowest paid worker, they neither need nor deserve a discount.

BTW, the person is an experienced data entry operator, who is accurate and responsible.

[edited by: lawman at 2:34 am (utc) on Nov. 20, 2007]
[edit reason] No Solicitations For Sticky Please [/edit]