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"The average American cashier makes $20,230 a year, a salary that in a single-earner household would leave a family of four living under the poverty line." 20k

• artsrc 13y ago
  I don't want a world where people consider their own income before having children and find that they can't afford to have children and not live in poverty, and have to miss out on having children.
  • res0nat0r 13y ago
    From the opposite end of the spectrum: If everyone could have as many children as they wanted regardless of any outside consequences, wouldn't that be just as harmful or not more?
  • tomjen3 13y ago
    Restrutoring your argument: >I don't want a world where people consider their own income before going on a trip around the world _and_ find that they can't afford to take a trip around the world and not live in poverty, and have to miss out on traveling the world. Everything, including children, are a cost. Is it not better that people look at the cost before, rather than after, they make a purchase? Especialy with something as important as a childs wellbeing. Anyway it takes a lot less money to raise a family than you might think it does. My grandparents raised my mother on next to nothing, my parents raised me on very little initially.
• dylangs1030 13y ago
  They should...but if everyone did that we'd have much less population growth. Most people, particularly lower classes, don't particularly care. I don't have a citation, but it's kind of self-evident. At the very least, people don't expect a family to cost so much, and think if they're prepared for it beforehand they'll be fine. You can't be prepared for poverty with a family.
• jusben1369 13y ago
  True. But it goes to a broader social issue. Should a family of 4 where one parent is employed full time by a large organization be earning below the poverty line. Was it like that 10/20/40 years ago. Where will it be in another 10 years? What's the impact on our social fabric. At the micro level as a rationale economic player you in theory should make that determination. At the macro level it's our job to decide whether we want one income families to be below the poverty line and what are the broader implications of that.
  • clarky07 13y ago
    Yes. If that person is a cashier at Walmart. The value added by that employee is simply not that high. They shouldn't get paid more just because we don't want to be poor. If you only make 20k you shouldn't be having 2 kids. If you continue to make poor life decisions, the outcome is living below the poverty line. Note, that I'm not against helping the poor. Charity is great, and helping people move up is great. Simply telling Walmart they should pay more for the same work is stupid. If you want to make more, you should provide more value.
    • lukeschlather 13y ago
      I think you're taking it for granted that people who have money deserve to be given money, and people who don't have money don't deserve handouts. Which is charity: giving a 1% rise in Walmart's profits to its shareholders, or giving that 1% rise in profits to its workers? What makes shareholders intrinsically more deserving of reward for the company's output than employees? Under what circumstances does Walmart giving money to people not qualify as charity? Why is it okay to legally compel Walmart to give shareholders money, but legally compelling Walmart to give its employees money is unfair to Walmart? It's really bizarre to call paying people a fair wage charity.
      • clicks 13y ago
        That is a great response, and it really puts things into perspective. If you're born a millionaire like Paris Hilton, and you capriciously decide to become a large shareholder of Walmart's stocks one day, you... well, you just sit back and watch the money roll in without doing anything. Even though you're providing zero value to society you make a very large amount of money. In this way, not only is clarky07's profoundly and bizarrely misinformed, it is also selfish and offensive.
• rwallace 13y ago
  The problem with your suggested strategy is that societies that follow it are headed for evolution's recycle bin, to be replaced by societies that don't.
  • iopq 13y ago
    Well, actually if all poor people followed this logic, then all children would grow up in more affluent households. Then the next generation could afford college, and all of the nice things that come with having parents that have money. But of course, it seems that only the poor people want to reproduce anyway.
    • rwallace 13y ago
      Except college is a negative sum game, an expenditure of resources to boost one's relative status at somebody else's expense; it was a ticket to money when few people had a college degree, but the more people who have one, the more find you can have a degree and still end up poor. And as you say, affluent people typically behave as though they don't want to reproduce anyway. In some cases that's actual lack of desire, and in others it's because by the time they finish climbing academic and career ladders and jumping through all the hoops, they're too old, but the end result is the same.
      • iopq 13y ago
        Except not really because there ARE literally thousands of companies who want software engineers right now, but there are not enough of them to go around in the United States. This is only going to get worse as everything moves from manual labor to software. We will need more and more developers and less janitors, less cashiers, etc. In 50 years there will be very few unskilled jobs. And they'll probably be something stupid like clicking ads or filling out surveys full time.
        • lutusp 13y ago
          > This is only going to get worse as everything moves from manual labor to software. True, but there's an interesting twist. As more people are hired to write software and build computers, some of those people create robots, the robots take over more of the unskilled jobs, which further accelerates the process.
• jlgreco 13y ago
  > especially two. Or for that matter, three, since the statement seems to be assuming 3 children and one adult (if there was a second adult, why would it be a single-earner household if they are under the poverty line that way? Surely the other adult should at least be on welfare or disability...)
• egsec 13y ago
  20,230 is what is reported by the US Government: http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes412011.htm http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes412011.htm So the number stated is the mean, not the mode or median.
• rayiner 13y ago
  Also, single earner household? Its not 1950.
  • logn 13y ago
    Low-skill workers might make better use of their time/money to dedicate one parent to raising children full-time instead of what many dual-earner households do which is send their kids to pre-schools, summer camps, and daycares, and then hire a variety of household helpers. Also, I think our society should still be structured to allow a single earner on minimum wage to support a family of four, without going on welfare of sorts. It's really complicated though, and for every argument supporting one side of this argument you can always find a really good rebuttal.
    • asdfdsa1234 13y ago
      Our society is structured that way, except for the "without going on welfare" stipulation. A sole breadwinner with a spouse and two children making $20k will receive another $10k in EBT and EITC, free healthcare, and pay a tax rate close to 10%. Effectively his or her income will be above $30k, which isn't bad considering per capita GDP is only about $45k. How could society be structured to guarantee higher wages to unskilled workers?
      • bzbarsky 13y ago
        I'm not sure about your comparison to per-capita GDP there. What you just described is a family of 4 with a total income of $30k+. Per capita GDP of $45k means that GDP per 4 people is $180k. That $45k number is per person, not per worker. So either the claim is that $30k is not that bad compared to $180k (unclear, a priori) or ... something?
        • jlgreco 13y ago
          >The median household income in the United States was $44,389 as of 2004.[9][dead link] The median income divides households in the US evenly in the middle with half of all household earning more than the median income and half of all households earning less than the median household income. According to the US Census Bureau, the median is "considerably lower than the average, and provides a more accurate representation."[49] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States#Median_income http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_...
• ufmace 13y ago
  One thing that nobody ever seems to point out in these discussions: Should we legally mandate that every job in the world must pay enough money to support a family of 4 as a single earner of the household? What about high school/college students, retirees, spouses of high earners, and other people who want a relatively low-skill job that doesn't pay that much? Should the kind of job they want be illegal because, someday, somebody who does have a family will take that job and then complain that it doesn't pay enough to raise their family?
  • jacoblyles 13y ago
    It's far less economically distorting to top up a family's income with an EITC than by mandating higher wages. For one thing, it avoids giving employers incentive to cut back on labor costs.
    • xyzzy123 13y ago
      But then you're subsidizing the labor costs of employers who pay low wages...
    • crdoconnor 13y ago
      Employers will not cut back on labor costs if there is demand and they're still making profits. They'll cry, bitch, whine and scream at congress because their profits took a hit, but they will not cut back if they're still making profits. Lack of demand, on the other hand...
      • twoodfin 13y ago
        You're missing the word "enough" before profits. Employers are like any other investor. If returns on hiring more labor are less than buying new equipment or just forgoing expanding and investing back in the market, then they won't be hiring.
      • tomjen3 13y ago
        You forget substitute goods. You can substitute a cashier with a self-serve machine, you can buy and use machines to clean the store faster, you can reduce opening hours, you can plan the store so that fewer employees are needed, etc. Yes capitalism is amoral so people will certainly be willing to pay to increase salary, but they are also willing to buy machines, outsource work, make customers do more and other things that reduce the need for employees.
• loudmax 13y ago
  Also, people with children to support should refrain from being laid off and having to find lower paying jobs.
• cantankerous 13y ago
  20k is on the low side, but one should still consider their own income before having children, especially two. I don't think people are concerned with the wage earners as much as they are about the welfare of their children when they say things like this.