What you’re not getting is that times are very different now. You were paid the equivalent of at least $15/hr with today’s buying power, and in better working conditions than what exist today.
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Easier said than done (clearly): Should one burger flipping job at Mc Donalds pay the bills of a 10 person household? And if a single person does the same job also, should they get the same compensation, or just 10% of that.
And how even can one such job practically generate the kind of profit that is needed to sustain this payroll model?
Must be nice. Most of us had to use the money from those kinds of jobs to pay for college. Tuition, car insurance, gas money… I got lucky in that my parents never charged me rent. A lot aren’t that privileged.
It’s only “empowering” when you have enough privilege and power to begin with. Otherwise it’s just another thing that drains your energy as you try not to drown.
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Yes.
Every job and also not working should still allow people to survive.
It’s entirely doable in the short term considering the levels of automation being developed.
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I remember working minimum to support myself, but when “minimum” meant something different than it does now, and when I only had myself to support, and when I went to college for free, and even under those conditions I don’t have good memories of it. Under today’s conditions, hell no.
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Righteous!
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The Duggars do not represent a majority of the population. 
Of course, same work, same pay. Take that disingenuous b.s. and throw it in the garbage.
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How about we take away all the corporate handouts before we start worrying about balancing our entitlement spending.
Corporate pork, ham and chitlings account for a ton of wasted money with no measurable economic effect. Take it away. Turn it into public housing.
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Maybe the shareholders can put off that 3rd yacht? And the landlord can make do with rent increases that are at the same rate as wage increases. Etc, etc, etc.
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My first thought: Wasn’t this just on Boing Boing recently?
Eleven years ago. I am also very very old it seems.
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Hmn, but ‘survive’ is another loaded term. Does survive entail free health care, or gas money for driving? Does survive entail the right to have and raise yourself as many kids a you please? Does survive also entail freedom of movement, as in can I choose to have the government pay my bills in Manhattan or SF?
Wellbeing is not a dream. We have bread enough for everyone. Everyone can easily be provided for. We just need to decide a corporation doesn’t need several hundered billion dollars in soft assets.
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Wow, impressive memory. Also yeah, you’re old. 
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I’d like to kibitz more, but I’m phone banking tonight for Bernie. And it’s the best birthday gift I could give myself. Get the VOTE out!
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If you had money for luxuries and wasteful indulgences like that on five bucks an hour you must be really old. I paid for school on that wage and i had to find ways to survive most people would find unpleasant to consider. I sure as hell didn’t have money for spending on dates. I couldn’t even see a doctor for acute infection. And I’m not even young anymore. If anything it’s probably worse now then it was then.
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I worked at Wal-Mart my last year of high school and first year of university. As I approached the end of my first year of university, I asked for less shifts for the last two weeks of April to give me more time to study and write exams. When I received my work schedule, I actually had MORE shifts than usual. I brought it up to my manager and he told me that we were going to be short-staffed that month and he trusted me to handle the department on my own more than the rest of the part-time staff, so I was being given extra hours to make up for all the other (apparently less skilled) part-time staff who would be taking time off that month. I pointed out that I was essentially being punished for being a good employee, and he told me that if it was that big a deal, I had to make a choice: school or work.
It was a pretty damn easy choice to make.
(And yes, I realize that I was privileged to have a family that was supportive and financially stable enough to make that an easy choice).
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I was considering that a family also might have depended elderly parents, let’s say 2, then 2 ‘core’ parents, 3 kids, that’s already a household of 7, maybe one more child from long before, a disabled brother, a baby on the way: you’re not far off of 10.
You call my approach disingenuous, I call yours simplistic.
How exactly? In the corporate world, pay is not considered by number of dependents, but by the ability to do the job.
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That’s part of why they did that to you. If you chose the job, they knew they had someone pliant they could abuse. Otherwise, odds were you’d just be the kind of troublemaker who insisted on not working through their breaks and clocking in on time, not ten minutes early. And that might inspire others.
I got given a similar choice – stay at the abusive workplace (because they refused to grant me the leave I was contractually owed), or take a chance on an extension at a term position somewhere way better. The only reason I hadn’t been let go was that the abusive job was unionized. I did good work, but I refused to do unsafe work. So they had no legal grounds to fire me or I am damn sure they would have.
Those kinds of jobs don’t want people with enough leftover energy to think. Especially not at the high end of their payscale.
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