The fine should be at least ten times the cost of the assistance.
Any company with a brain would see it is not profitable to pay that fine when providing a living wage costs them less.
I think a company who's primary objective is to make more money at the expense of all else may be absent a heart.
A 90% fine means they save 10% by not paying a living wage.
Incentive lost.
Paying a fine that is ten times the cost of that assistance is a direct and substantial financially negative impact that would reach even the most selfish.
Poverty impacts us all, either directly or indirectly.
And ironically, excessive wealth adversely affects us, too.
A minimum wage of 15$ an hour is a livable wage, you say?
Okay, then the maximum wage per hour should be $150.
Surely that is enough to live like a king, right?
Great, then let's set the maximum wage to $150/hr and lets see how the wealthy like it.
Oh, and screw that salary pay and stock perks and so on and so forth.
Who need that excess greed when you are making ten times the poorest among you?
Just saying, fair is fair.
Okay, Okay... I know. I'm full of shit.
Well, here's the news flash: So is everyone else.

For example, a wage paid to a person with one child might be high enough to exclude that person from public assistance, but if a person working the same job had four kids, that person would qualify for public assistance. In that case, companies would try not to hire people with lots of children!

A single parent raising four (or two, or three, or five, or ten) children would be at a severe disadvantage to make ends meet with a minimum income of only $15/hr.

Try raising a family of 5 children on $5/hr in the late 1960's:
*Kool aid at 5 cent a gallon instead of milk
*burlap bags of potatoes and onions made most dinners
*peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunches... when there were lunches.
*finding bags of canned food on your door step and wondering who gave it to you

Yea, poverty sucks alright.
Having a bunch of children and working full time and living in poverty really sucks.
My humble suggestion to those considering it: don't even think about it.

Unless that parent were widowed or divorced it would have been that parent's choice to bring more children into the world in poverty.
Strange that both rich and poor sometimes have difficultly acting like responsible adults and have more children than they can take care of.

Sometimes life isn't fair. It would really be a challenge to make ends meet on $15/hr and have 3 children. I'll bet it would be tough and you only have one child. I would say you are in a much better financial position than I am. I better wise up fast and stop having children and find a better paying job.

But getting back to your post - It really isn't any employer's business to know how many children you have when he of she hires you. Sure, they will find out when you fill out your W-2 form but that is after the hiring. But the fact remains, the poverty level for a single parent and one child verses four children would be substantially higher. I see your point and I do not have a solution. There must be one. This isn't something that has not been pondered and solved before. Do you have a solution?

Until companies realize that they are a part of the community like everyone else and what they do has an effect on everything. Bottom line, if everyone has enough to live on, have more money to spend, everyone benefits. I think they know that but I don't think they care. We can't just be a consumer economy, it has to be a balance and I think we are seeing the beginning of it. Walmart and MacDonalds workers are striking and people just might wake up. Just hope it's not too late to fix it.

Including taking care of another's children. I have known multiple women who had one or two children of their own who ended up raising four or five.

I think the solution really is the type of social programs we have today, including EITC and food stamps.

Employer responsibility should be to pay a decent wage for the work that is done, not to pay enough to take care of the entire family. Therefore I don't think that the proposal here is workable.

When you look at a corporation like Walmart, it's obvious that they shift employee costs to others and take the profits for themselves. This is why I think a wage tax for social benefits would be a better solution. If you don't provide insurance, regardless of the hours the employee works, impose an employer-side wage tax of 15%. That then can fund subsidies, and it changes the cost/benefit equation for making everyone part-time. But if the employer really does need part-time employees, they can still have them. They just can't have two part-time employees with no responsibility for the costs others have to pay. This would produce more full-time jobs and much less cost for the society as a whole.

I do think the system needs to change fundamentally. We have set up economic incentives for corporations that are perverse for the society and their employees. One of my concerns about ACA was that it increased those perverse incentives. It's Walmart's wet dream - they are free to hire as many cheap employees as they wish, and most of them will end up getting subsidized very heavily by the nation.

accountable for how they treat their employees. The number really doesn't matter, the outcome does.
8 or 9 an hour in LA or NY or even here in Oregon is below freaking poverty and in this country, it's a disgrace. The 90% was just another number. I like the 10 times as much but again, it's just a number. If someone works full time or even part time because that's all they can get, they must be able to feed their families. I think I was being to God Damn nice on my first post but something has to be done. If you just simply lower the top and raise the bottom by say 5%, that would make all the difference in the world. Personally I don't care if I was paid 1 dollar and hour as long as my mortgage was only 15 cents a month. It has to add up somehow...