http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_wage

The term "living wage" is used by advocates to refer to the minimum hourly wage necessary for a person to achieve some specific standard of living. In the context of developed countries such as the United Kingdom or Switzerland, this standard generally means that a person working forty hours a week, with no additional income, should be able to afford a specified quality or quantity of housing, food, utilities, transport, health care, and of recreation. This concept differs from the minimum wage in that the latter is set by law, and may fail to meet the requirements of a living wage.

In the United States, several municipalities and local governments have enacted ordinances which set a minimum wage higher than the federal minimum for the purpose of requiring all jobs to meet the living wage for that region. Often, these ordinances only apply to certain types of businesses, such as those receiving government contracts. However, San Francisco, California, Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Madison, Wisconsin have notably passed very wide-reaching living wage ordinances.

In Australia, the 1908 Harvester Judgment ruled that an employer was obliged to pay his employees a wage that guaranteed them a standard of living which was reasonable for "a human being in a civilised community," regardless of his capacity to pay. Justice Higgins established a wage of 7/- (7 shillings) per day or 42/- per week as a 'fair and reasonable' minimum wage for unskilled workers. In 1913, to compensate for the rising cost of living, the basic wage was increased to 8/- per day, the first increase since the minimum was set. The first Retail Price Index in Australia was published late in 1912. The basic wage system remained in place in Australia until 1967. It was also adopted by some state tribunals and was in use in some states in the 1980s.

The national and international living wage movements are supported by many labor unions and community action groups such as ACORN.

There is some disagreement with the idea living wage regulations actually help the poor. Many economists contend that, by increasing deadweight loss, mandated living or minimum wage regulations shrink the labor market and make the least-skilled workers less employable.^{[citation needed]}

Critics of living wage ordinances assert that the government should not intervene in the marketplace. Living-wage advocates respond that governments intervene in the market to help businesses through subsidies, tax breaks, and other assistance. Living wage laws typically only cover businesses that receive this type of assistance or have contracts with the government. epi.org

 [ send green star]

thanks for the post.

The living wage is the minimum standard employers and the feds should adhere to.

 [ send green star]

Tell me about it! It is amazing that any current society sets the minimum wage to less than what people can live on. Just like welfare only covers rent and leaves only a few dollars left for anything else for the month.

I know so many countries do not have the rights that we do, and that we have hopefully come a long way from slavery, and from working extremely long hours for little pay, but I can't help but wonder how a society can put such a low cap for minimum wage, especially since it is not going up like the cost of living is. Even people with two incomes are having a difficult time keeping up with the cost of living. Housing has tripled where I live in a very short time. Food prices have doubled. Thank goodness my rent hasn't tripled, but it does go up around $20-40 per year.

 [ send green star]

Here's an excerpt from Sunday's NYT:

"Twenty years ago, there were 14 American billionaires on the Forbes 400. Today, the list includes 374 (known) billionaires. In 1985, the combined wealth of the Forbes 400 was $238 billion, adjusted for inflation. Today, the 400 richest people in America are together worth $1.13 trillion. To put that number in perspective, $1.13 trillion is more than the gross domestic product of Canada. And it is more than the G.D.P. of Switzerland, Poland, Norway and Greece - combined.

The median household income of Americans has been stuck at around $44,000 for five years now. The poverty rate is up. Members of the Forbes 400, meanwhile, are richer than Croesus, and every hour they are getting richer."

 [ send green star]

People who do get rich do have a plan, work hard, and take risks. So, I have no problem with people getting rich as long as they are not exploiting others. I am against excessive profit, and interest. I do have a problem with people being poor, especially if it is because they are being restricted financially by their wages, they have no support systems (family, health programs, etc.), or by programs that take away their support when a person makes just a little bit more than the 'allowed' amount*. How are people expected to get ahead, to save for retirement, to save for when they are ill?

* This happens to students who have financial loans (I was only allowed to make $1000 per academic year, or else the amount of my loan would decrease. My loan was around $7K per year and this had to cover all living expenses, my tuition, books, and all the photocopying I did. So, I barely had enough food to eat, and I could never pay the last month or two of rent during the academic year. I had to make sure I had a job in place the month that I was finished school. It was a lot of pressure that did affect my health).

Single mothers had to fight annually for daycare, and even if they had to pay for daycare for more than one child, they also were not allowed to exceed a certain amount of earnings or they would be cut off from financial aid. This never made any sense to me. How can a person get out of their situation?

People should be able to have emergency money (at least 3 months worth of their living expenses), savings for retirement, and to be able to live without the intense stress of having to figure out how they will pay for their montly basic living necessities.

Everyone should also have health benefits.

 [ send green star]

for Entrepreneural and Capitalistic ventures.  Some build their wealth, but quite a bit more inherit their wealth.  Neither can be judged as to the level of deserving.  One relatively new program that has started in some public libraries are the free group investment classes.  Where those without individual investing ability can pool their money together, in what appears to be a transition from saving to spending and investment.  All very complicated matters and full of confusion and roadblocks for the average everyday person, no doubt.

Indeed, a major concern is that many have fallen by the wayside when it comes to the care of the poor, the young, the elderly, and our beloved domesticated animals.  You could say we are losing human infrastructure, of which appears as important as community infrastructure of roads and utilites.

I can't help but think that we are lucky to have a voice. So many before us suffered in silence, and had no choices. I know this is still the case for some.

 [ send green star]

according to what I read about the recent population statistics, young folk have just become out numbered by the older folk.  You know, the me generation and party animals?  They now out number and can rightly drown out the young folk.  I got the population information in an article, from a Special Edition Scientific American Magazine, that came out in September 2005.

Whose drowning out who? You confused me.

 [ send green star]

Human Population Grows Up; September 2005; Scientific American Magazine; by Joel E. Cohen; 8 Page(s)

The year 2005 is the midpoint of a decade that spans three unique, important transitions in the history of humankind. Before 2000, young people always outnumbered old people. From 2000 forward, old people will outnumber young people. Until approximately 2007, rural people will have always outnumbered urban people. From approximately 2007 forward, urban people will outnumber rural people. From 2003 on, the median woman worldwide had, and will continue to have, too few or just enough children during her lifetime to replace herself and the father in the following generation.

The century with 2000 as its midpoint marks three additional unique, important transitions in human history. First, no person who died before 1930 had lived through a doubling of the human population. Nor is any person born in 2050 or later likely to live through a doubling of the human population. In contrast, everyone 45 years old or older today has seen more than a doubling of human numbers from three billion in 1960 to 6.5 billion in 2005. The peak population growth rate ever reached, about 2.1 percent a year, occurred between 1965 and 1970. Human population never grew with such speed before the 20th century and is never again likely to grow with such speed. Our descendants will look back on the late 1960s peak as the most significant demographic event in the history of the human population even though those of us who lived through it did not recognize it at the time.

snip

http://www.sciamdigital.com/index.cfm?fa=Products.ViewIssuePreview&ARTICLEID_CHAR=A231AFCB-2B35-221B-619A310843B2AA7A

The Climax of Humanity; September 2005; Scientific American Magazine; by George Musser; 4 Page(s)

The 21st century feels like a letdown. We were promised flying cars, space colonies and 15-hour workweeks. Robots were supposed to do our chores, except when they were organizing rebellions; children were supposed to learn about disease from history books; portable fusion reactors were supposed to be on sale at the Home Depot. Even dystopian visions of the future predicted leaps of technology and social organization that leave our era in the dust.

Looking beyond the blinking lights and whirring gizmos, though, the new century is shaping up as one of the most amazing periods in human history. Three great transitions set in motion by the Industrial Revolution are reaching their culmination. After several centuries of faster-than-exponential growth, the world's population is stabilizing. Judging from current trends, it will plateau at around nine billion people toward the middle of this century. Meanwhile extreme poverty is receding both as a percentage of population and in absolute numbers. If China and India continue to follow in the economic footsteps of Japan and South Korea, by 2050 the average Chinese will be as rich as the average Swiss is today; the average Indian, as rich as today's Israeli. As humanity grows in size and wealth, however, it increasingly presses against the limits of the planet. Already we pump out carbon dioxide three times as fast as the oceans and land can absorb it; midcentury is when climatologists think global warming will really begin to bite. At the rate things are going, the world's forests and fisheries will be exhausted even sooner.

snip

Action Plan For The 21st Century

snip

8.  Prioritize more rationally (page 108).  Right now priorities are set largely by who shouts the loudest or plays golf with the right people.  As staff writer W. Wayt Gibbs describes, economists and environmental scientists have been working on better approaches.  With costs and benefits properly priced in, markets can act as giant distributed computers that weigh trade-offs.  But they can fail, for example, when costs are concentrated and benefits are diffuse.

http://www.sciamdigital.com/index.cfm?fa=Products.ViewIssuePreview&ARTICLEID_CHAR=A2305A3E-2B35-221B-684FAB4323FA56A0

 [report anonymous abuse]