Recent immigrants, women and racialized workers are more likely to be working for minimum wage so raising the m.w. is a step toward addressing the systemic inequalities faced by these groups of

people.

Is it fair that any job pays below the Poverty Line?

Is it fair that I respond to your question with another question?

Ignore Semck, he thinks impoverished westerners should be grateful they're not dying of malaria in Equatorial Guinea, whatever crumbs the bosses throw their way is more than they deserve. Living wage? Who needs it! Families to feed? Christ didn't have kids, so why should you? Bosses need and deserve a few more yachts, blessed by Supply Side Jesus.

lol. Very nice, putin. +1.

20,000 per year is below poverty level?! Bwahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!! Stop it! My sides are hurting!

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/75f0002m/2012002/lico-sfr-eng.htm

According to this, 10.25 per hour is just at the poverty line. So the lowest wage one can get paid in Canada is the "barely kind of sort of" poverty line and even that is generous as it still allows for 1/3rd of their income to go to non-essentials. In other words, 2/3rds to bills and 1/3 to party with and it is called poverty. What a joke.

$20,000 a year is pretty comfortable in Baton Rouge.

I would imagine it's not as comfortable in Calgary or Vancouver.

You can live on £12,000 a year without difficulty. Is it a solid foundation on which to start a family? No. But for unskilled workers (be they recent immigrants or whatever) it will pay the bills and allow for a modest social life whilst you put in some effort to get the skills that will allow you to get something better. For the housewife or househusband a part time £6 an hour job will add a healthy slice to the household income that still allows them to carry out childcare. For the student it will provide much needed funds for beer.

The minimum wage in Australia for a fulltime employee in Australia is $16.37 an hour. For a casual employee it is $20.30 an hour. That's quite high I think for a minimum wage.

@maple: Fuck off duchebag!

@Spyman - minimum wage in 1996 was A$9.50 an hour but that was when the exchange rate was over 3 Aussie dollars to the £, at over $20 that sounds pretty high now with the x-rate at 1.67, £12 compared to £6.18 in the UK

Usually it's very large corporations, with annual profits in the hundreds of millions or billions, that take advantage of minimum wage. To raise it above the Poverty Line wouldn't kill them.

"Usually it's very large corporations, with annual profits in the hundreds of millions or billions, that take advantage of minimum wage. To raise it above the Poverty Line wouldn't kill them. "

That may be in Canada, but not her ein the US. In fact, it is often the SMB that needs the lower paid workers in order just to squeeze out a small profit to be reinvested in the company and try to get it to grow.

www.roadid.com and www.myroadid.com - less than 15 employees. Father/son owned and maybe 4 other employees who make more than minimum wage. All the folks in the shipping department make minimum wage and this company doesn't offer (well didn't when I worked there) health insurance either. They couldn't afford it. I was the highest paid employee at the company because they were developing a new product line (the interactive ID) and needed a new website to gather and present that info to first responders (www.myroadid.com). the owners took smaller salaries than me and the phone folks made barely $10 per hour while the shipping folks made $7.25 per hour. Their profit margins were very low, making mere pennies per ID sold in actual profit.

I remember when it was 8.50$

maple leaf, you can urvive with that much money in Toronto, probably won't afford those newly built condos on young street, just collect dat wellfare like a lazy bum and you're all good

In Maine, it's still $7.50 USD an hour.

I remember when minimum wage was $3.35 per hour. In 1982, my first official (i.e. taxed through an employer) job was $3.35 per hour.

Old fuck.

Get off my lawn!

Can't shoot me if you can't catch me.

"In fact, it is often the SMB that needs the lower paid workers"

Super Mario Bros?

Let's see,

Rent on a decent one bedroom plus den or two bedroom apartment, $750 per month
Car payment on late model chevy (09 or newer): $250 per month
Insurance - $100 per month at most
Electric/Gas - $125 per in hottest or coldest for apartment
Water and sewer normally included in complexes
Cable plus internet - $75 for basic with 10mb bandwidth
Cell phone - $75

$1375 x12 - $16,500 plus food and gas for the car (and taxes of course)

That includes a car payment and full coverage insurance. Pay cash for an older car and only have liability and you can reduce that another $300 per month, or $3600 per year. Minimum wage of $10.25/hour (just over $21000 per year) could make it with the older car and liability only.

Now, you throw in kids and other dependents and that alters the numbers, but it shouldn't be the employer's responsibility to pay more just because the employee decided to get knocked up and pump out kids. The employer should be responsible for a living wage to full time employees assuming they are single without kids. Sounds like Canada has it about right. And yes, the US doesn't pay a living wage. No single person could live on $15,000 a year ($13,000 after taxes) at least not in a safe and clean environment with reliable transportation.

Minimum wage exists so companies can't pay their worker less money, not that they don't try. Right now companies don't hire workers full time so they don't have to pay for full benefit packages like health insurance.

And Obamacare is prompting a lot of smaller companies to make former full time employees part time casual so they don't have to provide the benefits.

And for those who want a citation.

http://news.investors.com/politics-obamacare/101713-669013-obamacare-employer-mandate-a-list-of-cuts-to-work-hours-jobs.htm

It's just gonna get worse by this time next year (unless it is repealed or the administration once again delays the implementation of the employer mandate another year).

The city of Mason, OH (pop 32,000) just told 200 workers they can't work more than 20 hours per week so they won't have to provide health insurance. What is going to happen is full time jobs will be turned into two part time jobs where feasible and more citizens will be forced to suck from the government's teet to get the government mandated crappy insurance that pays for nothing until a hige deductible has been covered. And all because of this ill thought out legislation.

"No single person could live on $15,000 a year ($13,000 after taxes) at least not in a safe and clean environment with reliable transportation."

a minor quibble, but actually, you can (barely) in Baton Rouge

these wages are useless without context -- good effort providing it here draug

And I point them out because they are just around the corner from where I live (Fairfield) grew up (West Chester) and Mason is where my mother-in-law lives.

In a clean and safe environment in Baton Rouge? BR must be cheaper to live in than Cinci. About all minimum wage will get you in Cinci is an efficiency in one of the slum areas of town. Not exactly safe or clean.

@CKR - SMB = small to midsized business.

BR is really cheap, yeah. Although 'safe' is pretty relative...

"And all because of this ill thought out legislation."

Or because small businesses screw up everything, and get special rules that gut the effects of reform. Make them follow the rules everybody else follows, and stop falling for their whining that they'll go out of business if they abide by basic labor laws.

Just a few stats to try and compare countries minimum wage rates with economic performance. First figure is equiv dollar rate, second figure is annul salary expressed as percentage of countries GDP per capita. In a sense this measures in country purchasing power.

Brazil $2.04 39.2%
Russia $1.70 15%
India $0.61 39.6%
China $1.73 38.9%
S Africa none

Portugal $4.60 37.6%
Ireland $9.20 42.8%
Greece $5.19 42.6%
Spain $5.57 35.4%

America $7.25 30.2%
Canada $7.71 41.5%
UK $8.76 47.2%

I find it interesting that there isn't a massive difference between BRICS and PIGS, I was expecting to spot a correlation, but one doesn't really seem to exist. I wonder if bringing USA upto around 38% of GDP would have on the economy?

David Neumark and William L. Wascher did an extensive study of the effects of minimum wages in their book "Minimum Wages." The Kindle edition is only $14.05 and is available here http://www.amazon.com/Minimum-Wages-ebook/dp/B004G8QO9S/
The authors found that indeed the minimum wage increased the unemployment rate for unskilled workers, especially teenagers. They also found that raising the minimum wage caused a reduction in the hours worked by minimum wage workers. The real damage came in life long earnings. Raising minimum wages delayed the age that workers entered the labor market and reduced the number of hours they worked in the labor market. It took workers longer to acquire skills that led to better jobs and wages.

People who think that raising minimum wages reduces poverty, decreases inequality, and produces a more prosperous society make those claims without the support of real, empirical, verifiable evidence. In other words they totally full of shit.

In my city, it's .66 canadian dollars per hour, according to today's exchange rate and rules in force.
Obviously, almost everything is much cheaper, but certeinly not more than 10 times cheaper. I don't personally know of any person that actually is paid that misery, except waiters who live with tips.
It's real guys, welcome to the third world.

don't miss the dot, it's 0.66 canadian dollars per hour

That's fine principians, but a dollar amount means nothing when we have no basis for comparison to the economy. What would the poverty rate be to just get out of poverty, assuming 2/3rds of after tax income went to bills, leaving 1/3rd for disposable spending purposes. In the US, gas costs $3.50-$4.00 per gallon. In Europe, the cost is much higher (but their cars get better mileage). Rent here can run $500 per month even for a cheap place in a rough part of town (cheaper in some cities, more in others). So a fixed "Minimum wage is CA$ 0.66 per hour" doesn't tell us anything but a figure with no context.

Even with no more context you can deduce that every imported well is much more expensive here that in US or Canada
I have already said that things are cheaper in general, no doubt. But NO more than 10 times cheaper. Gasoline gallon CA$3.61. It would be hard to find a small room for less than CA$100. I pay CA$164 for half an apartment with 2 rooms, and my roomy pays CA $204 for the other half.
Believe me if I say, that in my city we're not as bad cos almost no one is paid the minimum wage, but there are some who win 3 times the minimum and they need to work 13 hours a day to live moreless o.k.
However there are other places in my country where they do win the minimum and only survive due to a social network half-mafia that gives them some support, but they're continously trying to escape to big cites or US cos they improve dramatically their life quality if they manage it.

And there are countries that are worst than mine. I don't live in Africa.

Still lacking some context. where is this cesspool located?

Mexico :)