The Death of the Grand Old Party

Katheryne Helendale

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The minimum amount that can support a family of 4 decently for a set amount of time (weeks/months). Hence the name.
Okay, I know I'm going to end up regretting sticking my neck out here, but I have to ask: Why a family of four? I could very well see minimum wage being set to a level that allows an individual to afford his or her own living expenses, but I have to think that by the time one has a family of four, he or she should have climbed up the payscale to a point where having a family of four is financially feasible.
 

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The minimum wage was not intended to be a living wage, where the latter means supporting a family decently. It was intended to be a minimum, hence the name. It was suitable for people just starting out, like mailroom clerks or busboys (the people who clean up restaurant tables). Typically they would still be living with family or sharing living quarters. In college (a long time ago) I got 20% *below* minimum wage at a "work-study" job - part time school job on campus. We were part-time and students, so they felt we didn't deserve a "real" salary.

Around here, it takes $30/hr to afford an average apartment at the recommended 30% of gross income for rent. So that means two people at the $15/hr level, either roommates or a family couple with both working. As a minimum, to me that seems reasonable, but other people may see it differently.

One problem with a national minimum wage is cost of living varies dramatically. When Boeing sent me from Seattle to Alabama, effectively it was a 30% raise due to lower living costs there. So perhaps it should be tied to local cost of living rather than a flat national number.
I clicked on "disagree" because I disagree. The original minimum wage was intended to be a living wage.

The minimum wage was originally intended to be a living wage.
Okay, I know I'm going to end up regretting sticking my neck out here, but I have to ask: Why a family of four? I could very well see minimum wage being set to a level that allows an individual to afford his or her own living expenses, but I have to think that by the time one has a family of four, he or she should have climbed up the payscale to a point where having a family of four is financially feasible.
Law came out in 1933 during the Great Depression. Many were out of work and had a family of four to support. I do not see "family of four" or family at all in Roosevelt speech, or in the law that was enacted, though.

Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum - Our Documents (marist.edu)
In my Inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.
STATUTE-48-Pg195.pdf (govtrackus.s3.amazonaws.com)

that all employees shall be paid just and reasonable wages which shall be compensation sufficient to provide, for the hours of labor as limited, a standard of living in decency and comfort ;
 
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Jolene Benoir

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I clicked on "disagree" because I disagree. The original minimum wage was intended to be a living wage.




Law came out in 1933 during the Great Depression. Many were out of work and had a family of four to support. I do not see "family of four" or family at all in Roosevelt speech, or in the law that was enacted, though.

Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum - Our Documents (marist.edu)


STATUTE-48-Pg195.pdf (govtrackus.s3.amazonaws.com)
Pulling from that; a standard of living in decency and comfort. Now, that can mean different things to different people but $7.25/hr doesn't cut it. According to Wiki, most people, 90%, make higher. That does still leave 10% which could be a pretty high actual number of folks.

While the federal minimum wage is $7.25, most states:1 and many cities have higher minimum wages resulting in almost 90% of U.S. minimum wage workers earning more than $7.25. The effective nationwide minimum wage, the wage that the average minimum wage worker earns, is $11.80 as of May 2019.
 

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So, was talking with a friend of my mom's this morning [they had come down and left today, and we saw them off], and she was saying when he dad and his brothers joined the military at $15 dollars a month and that was like -really- good pay.

If that was really good pay, it would follow that 25 cents an hour -was- actually enough to support at least a wife, it seems to me.
 

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So, was talking with a friend of my mom's this morning [they had come down and left today, and we saw them off], and she was saying when he dad and his brothers joined the military at $15 dollars a month and that was like -really- good pay.

If that was really good pay, it would follow that 25 cents an hour -was- actually enough to support at least a wife, it seems to me.
They must be pretty old, because Union soldiers made $10 per month during the American Civil War. My step dad during the Great Depression was making 25 cents an hour, which comes to $40 per month assuming 40 hours a week.
 

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They must be pretty old, because Union soldiers made $10 per month during the American Civil War. My step dad during the Great Depression was making 25 cents an hour, which comes to $40 per month assuming 40 hours a week.
She might have meant 50, and misspoke - she is around my mom's age [so 70s]
 

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So, was talking with a friend of my mom's this morning [they had come down and left today, and we saw them off], and she was saying when he dad and his brothers joined the military at $15 dollars a month and that was like -really- good pay.

If that was really good pay, it would follow that 25 cents an hour -was- actually enough to support at least a wife, it seems to me.
I did a little research. The first minimum wage was set at 25 cents in 1938. In that year the average wage for Manufacturing, Mining, and Railroads was 65.7 cents. For "common laborers" (ie unskilled labor) it was 49.5 cents. For comparison, a loaf of bread was 10 cents.
 

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Okay, I know I'm going to end up regretting sticking my neck out here, but I have to ask: Why a family of four? I could very well see minimum wage being set to a level that allows an individual to afford his or her own living expenses, but I have to think that by the time one has a family of four, he or she should have climbed up the payscale to a point where having a family of four is financially feasible.
At the time, that was the average size of the typical American family according to the people whose job it was to figure those things out back then. That was before 1960 though and this chart only goes bac to 1960 but as you can see the average sized family has been dropping in number since 1960.

 

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The uptick in family size isn't about having more children. it is driven by having more children who can't afford to live on their own at 18.

A majority of young adults in the U.S. live with their parents for the first time since the Great Depression
In July, 52% of young adults resided with one or both of their parents, up from 47% in February, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of monthly Census Bureau data. The number living with parents grew to 26.6 million, an increase of 2.6 million from February. The number and share of young adults living with their parents grew across the board for all major racial and ethnic groups, men and women, and metropolitan and rural residents, as well as in all four main census regions. Growth was sharpest for the youngest adults (ages 18 to 24) and for White young adults.
 

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Evernote link because paywall

To appease those cultural blocs, Republican politicians must be willing to sacrifice everything, including what used to be the party’s foundational principles. To protect the gun, or to avoid contradicting the delusions of anti-vaccine paranoiacs, property rights must give way, freedom to operate a business must yield. The QAnon-curious Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene expressed the new mentality when she took to Facebook to denounce vaccine passports as “corporate communism.” It sounded crazy. But if you understand that she interprets communism to mean “any interference in the right of people like me to do whatever we want, regardless of the rights of others”—then, yeah, the property rights of corporations will indeed look to her like a force of communism.
 
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Aribeth Zelin

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Well, that's a good way to shut down the support of the rich - I mean, if they don't have any rights either? But I expect its more that rich people don't care; because it won't affect -them- to have property rights go out the window.

Oddly, though, by that logic, the GOP is going to start seizing guns any day now... that's property too.
 

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Well, that's a good way to shut down the support of the rich - I mean, if they don't have any rights either? But I expect its more that rich people don't care; because it won't affect -them- to have property rights go out the window.

Oddly, though, by that logic, the GOP is going to start seizing guns any day now... that's property too.
I think this will split "the rich." On one hand, you got people like my father who ONLY care about taxes and the stock market going up. On the other hand, many big corporate donors will push back because of this.
 
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Asshole created a monster (or rather kept feeding Gingrich's monster) and now he wants to play elder statesman and claim he's sorry about what the party has become. Boo fucking hoo.
 

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Asshole created a monster (or rather kept feeding Gingrich's monster) and now he wants to play elder statesman and claim he's sorry about what the party has become. Boo fucking hoo.
The press will eat it up and call him a hero for speaking the truth, though. They have the memory of ants.