What is the minimum obligation an employer owes one of his full time employees? If an employee who, because of his work, doesn’t have the time to make money outside of his job, why doesn’t the employer have a responsibility to give the employee enough to meet his most basic needs?

Maybe a more basic question should be, “Can people survive in the US on the current minimum wage?”

Peace.

Constipation of the mind, diarrhea of the mouth.

What has the talking points crowd told you to think today?

The middle class is what makes this the greatest country in the world and setting certain standards of living like the 40 hour work week and a minimum wage help to ensure that we don’t fall back to those times where your boss forced you to work 7 days a week for pennies an hour. Yes, lots of smart, hard working people were forced to work for sh1t wages in the past. Hard to believe, huh? What makes America great is that if you are ambitious and want/are able to work more you will excel, make more $$ and have a better quality of life. But for those who can’t work as smart because of their physical/mental capacity we as a society have established a benchmark for a minimum standard of living. For examples of countries that do not follow this model check out the people living in shanty towns in India, Mexico, parts of China.

Last time I checked gas cost more than it did 10 years ago, a gallon of milk cost more, healthcare, etc all cost more than in 1996. Every year I get at minimum a 3-4% cost of living increase at my job, so do all of our elected officials (sometimes more) and I would bet most of the people reading this do too. So why in the fu*k are so many against affording our fellow Americans the same cost of living increase that we all have become accustomed to?

Do these people not deserve to make enough to support themselves – not to mention a family? In a lot of cases these are the working poor. Hard working people that work 2 jobs but still can’t make ends meet. They are holding up their end of the social contract, doing what you ask, NOT just taking a free handout and falling back on social services. So let’s give these people a break. An extra $1 or $2 an hour won’t mean a lot to you or me but it will to someone making $6.15/hour cleaning houses. Let’s do what’s right, cut these people some slack. God bless!

Why don`t you slap your obnoxious self into the next room for me and let someone else type for a while huh?

Comment by michael

Why, the universal inhabitants of our planet Michael. First things first however. The healthcare monopolies have to be broken up first. The healthcare monopolies are the pharmaceutical industries, the chemical suppliers to pharma, and the corporate owned
” hospital condos ” industry.

Everyone pays in and everyone benefits. Employers benefit with healthy workers. The nation benefits with a healthier populace. Hospitals benefit from a decreased workload, which also helps with the national nursing shortage crisis.

Even if you can`t afford to pay in, you still get the same treatment as everyone else.

Why? We are Americans. We`ll find a way. It`s what we do.

Too. Stupid. To. Breathe.

Oh, and Mr. Tirebiter, sir? The site attracts trolls because there is no membership feature. A fact that may, or may not, be a Good Thing. That and the fact that frother sites and squawking heads takl about this site a lot and thus, they are kinda “sent over here”.

He ain’t playing.

What we have right now is a market regulated in favor corporations. We’re trying to change it to a market regulated in favor of labor.