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The Living Wage. The ... However, unlike the Mininum wage, the living wage has so
far only been enacted on the county and city level. Cities ...
The Living Wage. ... Recognizing the need and instituting the living wage, as a means
of reducing government dependency, is crucial to the state government. ...
... Over the past decade, politicians have sought to reform the national poverty levels
by lobbying for what is frequently referred to as a living wage. ...
... Instead of a minimum wage the US should go by a living wage. A living wage
is a term used to describe the minimum hourly wage necessary ...
... Now, I had heard of something called a living wage before and I was curious
if it differed from the minimum wage and if so how. ...
Submitted by sh3lby on March 26, 2008
Category: Social Issues
Words: 3119 | Pages: 13
Views: 91
Popularity Rank: 99,250
Average Member Grade: N/A (Add a Comment / Grade this Paper)
Poverty. This one word elicits powerful manifestations. African children orphaned by AIDS, crammed into insufficient orphanages that lack the resources to care properly for them. “Untouchables,” the lowest caste of Indian society, where members are forced to work in conditions so unsanitary, the health of the members are often at great risk. China, a nation with such an incredible population surge, that its families have resorted to killing female babies. Situations like these trouble our conscience; however, we subsist in one of the world’s wealthiest nations. In the land of I-Pods, paparazzi, and camera phones, the United States often appears far removed from the problems plaguing the rest of the world. The United States survived, even flourished, despite The Great Depression, the Gas Crisis of the 1970s, and even the threat of recession in the most recent decade. Our nation is truly thriving!
How unconceivable then, that in the beginning of the new millennium, 26.8% of workers in the U.S. workforce, earn poverty level wages, up from 23.7% just twenty years earlier! (EPI 2002). According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, just over one in four working Americans leads a life of poverty. Both the Federal and individual State Governments have created minimum wage requirements, dictating the minimum employers must pay workers for an hour of labor. Minimum wage applies to nearly all workers, with few exceptions.
The current minimum wage in Maryland is $6.15 per hour, which gives earners an annual income of less than $13,000 (MD Division of Labor and Industry 2004). The U.S. Poverty Line is an annual income of $17,690 to support a family of four, which averages an hourly wage of $8.20 (EPI 2003). Clearly, a family subsisting on minimum wage in the State of Maryland is unable to survive above the poverty line.
The costs of housing a family alone incorporate a myriad of expenses, far beyond that of basic...
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