Welcome good citizen. Today we’ll take another crack at a conundrum that is most puzzling, poverty.
In a land where 2.5 million are homeless and 35 million live below an artificially low poverty ‘threshold’, we have to ask the question of why?
Is this just the way it is? If we look back through history we’d see that today’s ‘needy’ are, for all appearances, better off than they used to be...
Or are they?
I would posit here that inside plumbing and electricity do not prosperity make. Then there’s the 2.5 million who don’t even have that much.
So, is poverty an ‘insoluble’ problem? Where do you think the poverty ‘bar’ needs to be set?
While we ponder that question we come upon another...who is responsible for poverty, the victims or society?
Understand that in our society if you are poor you have no one to blame but yourself...
But is this really the case?
This is a particularly disturbing question given that the ranks of those counted as impoverished continue to swell.
Many of those who are counted as impoverished simply don’t earn enough money to meet their basic needs...thus are they forced to ask for government assistance.
These aren’t handout programs either; you have to have some kind of job to qualify for assistance! Welfare is another whole can of worms.
These public assistance programs are taxpayer supported...so if we connect the dots here what we have are employers ‘benefiting’ from hiring taxpayer subsidized workers!
Or to phrase it another way; why aren’t these people being lifted out of poverty once they find a job?
To which the answer is...employers aren’t compelled to pay a living wage.
I could take this situation a step further and question why employers are allowed to reap a greater benefit from the sweat of your brow than you do...but that’s taking things too far...it seems no one (but anarchists like me) are willing to ask that question.
But I digress.
Wages and what constitutes a living wage is what’s at issue here.
So consider if you will what will happen to the poor who are receiving government aid when the minimum wage rises.
The amount of aid they receive will be reduced by the amount of the raise...leaving them with exactly zero.
Hell of a ‘poverty fighting’ measure, isn’t it?
Oh, it is probably wise to mention that the number of US citizens receiving food assistance (of one kind or another) currently hovers in the 20% range.
For whatever the reason, the ‘threshold’ to receive food assistance is higher (meaning you can earn more and still qualify) than that used for determining poverty.
With 20% of the nation’s population receiving food assistance it kind of makes you wonder what the ‘real’ poverty picture looks like.
If we look at the income distribution chart we’d find the forty percent mark for men standing at around $25,000 p/yr with women faring somewhat worse at $13,000.
Before anyone panics I had best mention that the raise in the minimum wage will have the greatest effect on those working entry level jobs...and I’d posit a fair number of these workers are still in High School.
But with that said, what of the 20 million waiters/waitresses and bartenders, the ‘tip compensated’ portion of the labor force that the minimum wage law treats separately?
But once again I digress.
Let’s refocus on poverty but this time we’ll take a look at the other end of the compensation spectrum.
I went Here to find some payroll information.
The figures cited are from table 10.
What I was looking for (but I’m not so sure I found) is the size of the total payroll in the US.
This chart tells us total payroll in the US is $ 7,623.7 (in billions so the seven is in the trillions place.) We whip out our handy dandy calculator, divide the number of working people by this dollar amount and get...
Woo hoo! Wouldn’t I like to be making that!
$ 56,056.62!...a piece!
Now this is the figure given for ‘employee compensation’. Under ‘personal income’, which I assume includes stuff like income from investments and such we add four trillion dollars to the seven and a half trillion figure!
Yep, the total ‘personal income’ figure is currently in the eleven trillion-dollar range.
So as we can see, if the payroll figure alone were equally divided among all workers we wouldn’t even be talking about poverty, it wouldn’t exist...or would it?
Because the sad answer is yes, yes it would. We divided our rich payroll only among those who work. Not all that live in poverty are in fact employed...or employable for that matter.
Then there’s the matter of 20% of the population qualifying for food assistance vs. this rather hefty total payroll figure.
Both factors combined point to how grossly our society is being mismanaged.
Um, I guess I should add that while the $56k figure is quite impressive to me (I’m on track to earn less than half of that amount this year, considerably less) those of you making that much or more are certainly worth every penny.
Which is to say I don’t think the ‘solution’ to this problem lies (solely) in income re-distribution.
That said, income redistribution is exactly how this situation is currently being addressed...albeit weakly, very weakly.
Boggles the mind, eleven trillion in personal income and twenty percent of the nation qualifies for food assistance...
I don’t know about you but there’s something awfully wrong with this picture...especially considering who does the heavy lifting around here.
An equitable income distribution graph as a mild angle, not a damn near vertical ascent as it is today!
Given the amount of money ‘allocated’ to payroll we can readily see there is no excuse why every job doesn’t pay a living wage, the money to do so is there.
Which brings us back to our minimum wage issue. Shouldn’t the minimum wage really be the minimum ‘living’ wage?
No one should work a job that doesn’t crack their nut.
No one.
Thanks for letting me inside your head,
Gegner