I would have a large savings account.

My teeth would not be in the shape they are in.

In my entire working career I have never made anywhere close to that amount of money.

I have been a steelworker, a rebar bender, built freight cars, made aerosol cans, made T-shirts, I was a cook on a tug boat floating up and down the Ohio, various cashier jobs, restaurant jobs, etc.

My life would be completely different now if I had been paid a decent wage.

of praying he can make it for one more year. And I could contemplate retiring sometime before eighty-five.

It's not like we were profligate with our money. We had a very nice retirement fund, but somehow the bank got most of it and health costs (the insurance industry does every thing it can not to pay) took quite a bit too.

I have been living in poverty since then.

I did everything right.

I bought my home in 2002.

I put a down payment on my house.

I paid an extra $200.00 per month on the principal.

I paid an extra $5000.00 to get rid of the PMI insurance.

They were late paying my taxes.

They sent me a new payment book several times a month for 6 months.

Each time the payment was higher.

I finally got that straightened.

My home would have been paid off in 9 years.

Paying a 30 year mortgage in 9 years was exciting to me.

But alas it was not meant to be.

I worry about being foreclosed on every day.

I don't have food security.

My teeth are broken, I have cavities, and it is embarrassing.

If people want to know what causes depression I can tell them.

STRESS & POVERTY

The stress from my job is the reason for my disability.

Now I live with the stress of poverty.

get a new 30 year mortgage on the remaining amount you owe + $5,000. It would mean you were paying more interest in the long run, but it would mean lower payments and not losing the home or the equity you have in it.

Another thing that might help - taking in a renter. That can be tricky, because people are hard to live with, and it can be hard to find a good renter. I would not want to do it unless my house could be divided. Or unless I could find a spouse or a really, really good friend. I lived with several roommates during college, four of them, and for one year shared only ONE room.

It could be at least worth looking. (and it could also be a disaster - if you rent to Jeffrey Dahmer or something. I mean, would you be able to tell he was a serial-killing lunatic by just a few conversations and checking some references?)

My monthly income is too low.

I owe to little on the loan.

I live on a 12 acre farm with a double wide that is considered a permanent foundation.

It is next to impossible to get a loan on a double wide.

If the double wide is on a farm it is even more difficult.

I don't think a room mate would work out.

I suffer from agoraphobia and I am a hermit.

If I force myself to leave the house it can trigger a panic attack.

I am very happy and content at home.

My only problems are poverty and stress caused by poverty.

My only dream was to own my own home and never worry about being hungry.

I don't think my dream will ever come true.

I know it won't because now I can't even afford to buy a lottery ticket.

I use to spend $2.00 per week on a lottery tickets.

One draw on Tuesday and one draw on Friday.

I tell my mom I am so poor I can't even afford to dream.

well, if you could rent the land, or learn how to grow crops.

They tell me that a couple of acres planted to vegetables will bring in quite a bit of money. My own attempts to garden did not produce very much.

I once had a mobile home on 4.5 acres, and ended up selling the land for a tidy profit. But yeah, the trouble is that a mobile home does not have equity like an actual home, but I sold 4.5 acres for about $22,000. Depending on zoning laws you could perhaps fence off five acres of your land and sell that for enough to pay off your house.

I am not sure I should mention this, but if you owe little enough on this home, then perhaps I, myself, could finance you. But it depends on what the definition of "little" is, and it would require some investigating on my part. But I did just put $7,000 into my savings account where it is earning a whopping 0.25% interest.

But it would be nicer if your mom could do it. I kind of started my family on this. My sister was complaining about her car loan at the same time I was looking to get a CD. So I thought, hey, what if I lent the money to sister instead of getting a CD? I get a higher rate, and my sister saves some interest costs.

But having agoraphobia and panic attacks sounds like more than just having poverty and stress as problems, and if you used to function at those jobs, I don't understand why that would change.

My agoraphobia and panic attacks were caused from the stress of my last job.

I continued to force myself to go to work, even though I knew it was destroying me.

I was strong and bull headed and did not want to give up.

I was afraid I would lose my home if I quit my job or got fired.

I almost had a nervous breakdown.

I tell people they broke me and I will never be the same.

Have a safe and pleasant evening.

Again thanks for caring.

the employer is saying, I'd pay you less if the law would let me.

As a Union Journeyman Carpenter I earned more than this before I retired. I earned every penny and was able to raise 4 children comfortably. In a good (we are Democratic and able to vote on our reps so we can make a Union good) Union, according to the contract of the job you are on, there are usually ample opportunities for overtime pay.
over 8 hrs a day- time and 1/2, over 10 a day- double time
weekends- time and 1/2 so then the pay goes into double time and double time and 1/2 when the prior benchmarks are made.
Often, Sundays were double time to start with.
There were always people on the "out of work list" so if you were not competent or a hard worker, you were replaced.

Still our paychecks were taxed more than the "big guys" and they were paid MUCH better than us...at least we earned a living wage.

I almost can't imagine the realitive awesome buying power and life impact. Stress? What stress?

By the same token though, how does someone on the current minimum wage survive at all? It would seem to be just about gone by the time you eat and travel back and forth. Forget shelter, utilities, saving, or investing much less any pleasure.

$25 an hour is a decent wage but still just barely gets you to the median income and for that worker it is utterly unobtainable. They wouldn't make that unless they almost worked 24 hours a day 365 year.

Think about this, a minimum wage worker even if they never slept, never took a meal break, and if they could teleport to the next gig, never seeing their families and friends for even a second still wouldn't gross 65k so to get to median these people would have to work I'd guess at least 20 hours a day which would mean no sleep still but gives them travel time to each stop and maybe a meal if they can drive.

Minimum wage ought to be called homeless pay, it is the amount it takes to barely survive without shelter and related expenses.

In many states, welfare benefits are better than a minimum wage paying job, so a lot of people just dont bother. If the min wage was higher, more people would rather make more money than stay on welfare.

It is, at least, a living wage in most areas of the country. Right now anyway. But it would need to be tied to the cost of living so the owners couldn't play with costs and inflate the cost of goods, ESPECIALLY goods that everyone needs to survive. So I'd say workers need to set the COL adjustments on a regular basis, NOT the bosses.

Also what good is this amount of money if you don't have a job at all? What work that's there needs to be shared out among all workers AT FULL TIME WAGES until everyone who wants a job, HAS a job.

That would be a start to having an economy that works for everyone.

the corporatocracists would never let the "hoi poloi" be able to live decently - after all they could return to the Golden Age if that happened.

I made a little more than that and with a child (and no financial support), a mortgage, car payment, home, auto and health insurance, food, gas, taxes, 2 cats and all the other essentials, I still couldn't get ahead. I worked a side job to have "extra" money for hobbies, gifts, etc.

I remember when a $50k salary meant you were well off. Now it means you can make ends meet, but you're one (medical, legal, natural disaster) emergency away from trouble.

Our current minimum wage is a joke. Even $15/hr isn't livable.

Something's gotta give.

I think they should be based on cost of living and legislatures should visit the topic every year in their region to raise the wage if there is inflation in any areas that would affect the average worker's needs, like housing, food, transportation, medical.

all I do is survive. But on $25/hr I could survive AND enjoy my life! Or do something to advance my life! Wow! That would be great!

Do their wages go up proportionately too?

Higher skilled jobs would pay much more and $25.18 wouldn't buy much more.

on even the workers. What good is a high income if the infrastructure of everything is falling apart? or you cant afford to go to the doctor or get an education and much more, which is all happening in the US right now.
The tax rate on the rich should increase the most though, back up to at least 60% including capital gains.

More spending money is great but it has a huge downside too. I look at the parking lot of highly paid union workers and its full of new gleaming giant gas hogs. I see bigger McMansion houses using more and more resources and energy. The 800 pound gorilla of climate change is breathing down our necks and we go on as usual with unrestrained materialism which will doom us all if we dont spend trillions in a "war" to fight it.

Middle aged people are avoiding the minimum wage service jobs that put them on display. Background service jobs may still be minimum wage slavery, but at least they don't put you on display. It is a myth that only high school students were taking these jobs. Instead it was the poorest people in the community - whoever was one step away from welfare: largely people of color. Putting them on display reinforced class stereotypes.

So let the machines take the humiliating service jobs: that's what they were supposed to do for us, anyway.

If there are "no jobs left" after that, then are political and social process will have to deal realistically with that somehow. If we have to "make work" for people, hopefully it won't be work that displays the fact that they are the minimum wage servant-workers of society.

they should be paid right though

but the people actually doing that work might feel differently about it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/12/upshot/unemployment-the-vanishing-male-worker-how-america-fell-behind.html

not all service workers feel that way because not all of them used to make $80,000

but certainly they all should make more

Or are all of them marking time in customer-facing service positions, hoping they can get out as quickly as possible?

If you jump out of bed in the morning and can't wait to get to the job, it's not called work, it's called a career or a labor of love!

Work is something you are forced to do to survive.That's what we have accepted because of corp. propaganda for decades.

Most people WORK their whole lives looking forward to the leisure and happiness of retirement. Why can't we use the same retirement model for one's whole life. Happiness from birth to passing, where we're not enslaved to work but are free to choose the things we love to do?

A guaranteed annual income.

Many of the men in the article who would not take a minimum wage job working *on display* would take a minimum wage job in an office where the shame of their low class status was hidden.

A guaranteed annual income

but fast food is one industry where they can't move offshore to hire labor to do what the job requires. As you see here they are already cutting their labor costs. Maybe a wage increase would accelerate the process but fast food isn't an industry that would be harmed by a higher minimum wage. They pay what they do because they can find workers who agree to work for them at the wages they offer, they still exist in countries where unions dominate.

I'm disabled physically and seriously mentally ill so it wouldn't benefit me even slightly.

Profit comes from either overcharging customers, which is unsustainable in the long term, or paying workers less than the value of their labor (which is unsustainable in the longer term.) That's the only option for someone running a business to make a long-term profit. The lower the wages, the bigger the profit.

And i don't sit in some air-conditioned office to make mine...