My week living on the minimum wage

New York Daily News ^ | February 7, 2004 | HEIDI EVANS

[Badray]

LOL

That was my immediate reaction too.

I started to work when I was a young child. Every time that I wanted more out of life, I increased my work effort and got what I wanted. Sometimes I worked two jobs. Sometimes I worked 12 to 14 hours a day. I also knew from growing up poor that I didn't want my kids to grow up the way I did. I was 35 before I had kids.

Hardships, choices and priorities. We all have them. It's how you handle them that matters.

[RockyMtnMan]

I have a solution for this so-called problem. New York is an expensive place to live for several reasons:

Rent Control Laws - Force landlords to charge significantly higher monthly rental fees on their other properties. Get rid of them.

Taxes - This is an entirely new discussion so I won’t go there.

High-income earners - Some of the wealthiest people in America live in New York. Because of this fact the real estate moguls cater to them not low-income earners. This causes a shortage of low-income housing.

The answer, everyone who isn't wealthy enough to live in NY should leave. Within two months the "minimum wage" will become a market driven wage. When everyone that can afford to live in these high-income areas get pissed because there isn't anyone to serve their lattes they'll either subsidize them on their own dime (through taxes) or pay a higher price for the products they consume.

In Colorado Ski Towns (ski resort towns) the residents pay higher taxes to subsidize the low-income workers that would not be able to afford housing in town. This is a significant issue because snowfalls can cause commuting problems for low-income earners. Some resorts actually own housing for this very purpose. The resorts must have these workers in order to sustain their business just like businesses in Manhattan need laborers to serve their customers.

I don't see the difference between a Colorado Ski town and NYC. Both have wealthy residents that cannot live without services from the low-income earners.

[js1138]

I had always thought that $2.99 for a quarter-pound of turkey for Alex's lunch seemed reasonable, until I did the math and realized I was paying nearly $12 a pound.

LOL. What a dumb cluck.

[RockyMtnMan]

Value is a perception that is relative to ones income. If you make 200k a year a $10 sandwich doesn't sound outrageous. If you make 10k a year you wouldn't even consider buying the same sandwich.

[tdadams]

I agree completely. Back when I was in college, spending $200 on anything was inconceiveable. Now that I have a much better income, I can drop $200 and hardly give it a thought.

[js1138]

If this chick has never done the math to figure out what food costs, she is a pampered brat. I mean pampered as in "still in diapers."

This ranks up there with not knowing what a supermarket scanner is.

[js1138]

I can drop $200 and hardly give it a thought.

Good for you, but I hope you are not writing articles about what a shock it is to calculate the price of something.

[Timm]

Give me a break. Does she think that people struggling to get by will stop if minimum wage is raised .75 an hour?

Some people now trying to make do on what she experimented with will *lose their jobs*. Others will never have the chance. Higher minimum wage, no job. Why doesn't that fact count against rasing the wage? Or against the alleged motives of people who would raise the minimum wage? Why not a news story on trying to get by with *no* job, as many people would have to do if the wage were raised?

Then, as many others have pointed out, she's eligible for many other programs (in NYC, to be sure). She also could babysit for the $10 an hour she says she has to pay *her* babysitter.

And finally, minimum wage or minimum wage, it's hard to have only low-paying skills and an out-of-wedlock child. Don't do that.

Would we have as much sympathy for someone who gambled away all of her assets, and then had to make a go with nothing? Why, then, should we view childbirth differently? Many people avoid children until they're more settled in life for exactly these reasons.

[tdadams]

How'd you guess? What's the price of a gallon of milk, about a buck?

[New Horizon]

1) Find a real job.
2)Don't have kids you can't afford, because I can't afford to pay your way through your pathetic life.
3)Get spayed.

[RockyMtnMan]

It's around $2.80 here in CO.

[fishbabe]

you are wayyyyyy too logical to ever be a politician!!!!!!!!

[js1138]

At which store? And would that be with the anal probe Super Saver card, or bareback?

[fishbabe]

i read it too...excellent book...the problem is why should anyone get a job,go to school,study hard,work hard and wait to have babies when you can afford them......the dems will give you whatever you need now,so why work for it and have to wait.....

[fishbabe]

arkinsaw for president!!!!!!!!!!

[BlessedByLiberty]

Think of all the money and time she'd save if she bought a small $12.00 turkey, cooked it and used the leftovers to make lunches, dinners for herself and her child?

Wow, think of what she could do with a ham or if she learned to plan a menu and shop accordingly. I remember my PB&J days, brown bagging it to save a few pennies.

[js1138]

This woman should live a week with a real family. What on earth does she think all thos supermarket coupons are for? Flyover people?

[sweetliberty]

"As minumum wage job wages are forced artificially higher, our kids find no work and positions are dropped by employers who make do with fewer employees."

Isn't this the point at which we "need" illegals to do the jobs Americans won't do?

"Next this author will tell us that we are not being fair to illegal aliens who are coming here to work"

Coming soon to a neighborhood near you.

[fuzzycat]

When I got out of high school in 1965 I worked for the Dept. of Agriculture cotton classification division here in GA. $1.25 hr. That fall I began working as a tool and die makers apprentice-$1.25 hr. Worked all the OT I could get.After four years in machine shop the most pay I got was $4.00 hr. I quit. Went to college with tuition grants from the state and graduated with honors while running a refinishing business.I have now been in aircraft interiors for 27 years and would't even pay a part time high school kid minimum wage to sand seat frames. That's part of it. Someone with initiative can always find better pay. But most kids in school today don't even care to learn to spell, read and write. So what the Hell do they expect.By the way, the last two years in aviation have not been good. I lived on $9000.00 in 2002 because I do not have an extravagant life style. No employees were laid off and the business is still open and things are improving. I actually have to pay cap gains tax for last year. I really don't want to hear this whiney crap.

[Igraine]

Nevermind turkey, think of all the money she could have saved if she had fed her daughter LOBSTER ($6.99 a lb. at a Chinese market near my house in NYC).