Average rent for a one bedroom apartment in my county is $800. That doesn’t include water, sewer, garbage and electricity bills which can easily top $200. Food, if you like Top Ramen rice and beans would be $200/mo. Gas, if you drive to work, is conservatively another $100. That totals $1300, just to scrape by.
Your $8/hr job will leave people living out of their cars. Especially when employers will keep the low wage employees hours under 32 so they won’t have to pay them any of the benefits offered to their full time employees.
The “$300†average check is just that, an average. But if you were making $25/hr in Washington, your check would be $560. That’s around $500 after deductions with which, someone can actually survive on while looking for a job. Using the statewide average income, the check would be $460. Again, enough to live on.
I know people that made over $50,000 a year who lived within their means and are fighting for $10 an hour jobs. They’ve sold their houses, all their luxury items, and are depleting their savings and 401k’s. Your “jobs everywhere†doesn’t apply to the Seattle area where there are far more people than there are jobs.
Tom wrote:
The unemployed are a useful political tool to Democrats, a group of Americans dependent on the State for their existence. Democrats would like this group to be as large as possible.
This is the equivalent of liberals saying Rush Limbaugh wanted the country to go down the tubes when he said he hoped Obama would fail.