If a person is working 40 hours a week, they should be paid enough to live off of. [View all]

[Humanist_Activist]

I don't care if they work as a shit shoveler, a burger flipper, or as computer programmers or whatever it is, no full time employee should be denied a living wage.

And don't give me this shit about "free markets" or different skill sets/advance skill sets, you have college graduates working in IT for 8 bucks an hour, at companies where advancement is damn near unheard of, in the same boat, financially, as a 17 year old flipping burgers at McDonald's.

What we have is across the board wage depression, but without the corresponding decrease in cost of living. You have people who range in age from 20-40 who had to move back in with their parents, several times, just to avoid homelessness. How many others have their parents carry them in other ways, for example, paying their car insurance for them? Or their medical insurance? There's a reason why the 26 year old provision in Obamacare is becoming very popular among the populace, and that's just a sad state of affairs.

The minimum wage is useful in that its a good selling point for companies to say they are "better" than the government by paying people 8 bucks an hour versus $7.25, but its not like anyone, even in the most rural, economically depressed, areas of the country can live off either wage.

This is why unions are important, and why we need a living wage provision as well. Everyone who is employed full time should earn enough money to be able to afford a place to live, food on the table, transportation to work, and yes, even entertainment and extras, at least enough to be able to treat themselves to going to the movies more than once a year.