qxessence:

revolutionarygays:

i hate so much when rich people claim they could live on minimum wage

you can’t. you absolutely fucking can’t.

it’s not just about how literally impossible it can be or how the rich are so accustomed to luxury they wouldn’t be able to stomach being poor – it’s about the fact that any experience rich people have had with poverty was temporary.

“to prove that $8/hr is humane i lived on minimum wage for a month – and it was fine. you just have to spend wisely and be frugal.”

i promise any rich person who’s done (if they even have) something like that was ACHING by the end of that month. that week. they were edging out the end of that month thinking “after this i can go back to my cozy $100k a year, i just have to get this month over with”

it’s livable, right? this guy proved it. one month and he’s sure – it’s totally doable! he ate gross food and kept his lights off and his AC off and scrounged up change for gas for a month and it wasn’t THAT bad!

but man…. imagine if that was your whole life.

i’m sure they felt a little stressed after realizing how tight the budget was at the end of that month… imagine that but for years. years and years with no end in sight. you never have the relief of going back to your $100k salary and flat screen TV. it’s years upon years of pent up stress and anxiety

what if your car breaks down? what if you miss your bus? what if you have an unexpected charge on your card and overdraft? what if the kids want pizza? what if you call out sick from work? what if you can’t afford christmas presents?

and on top of the stress, you’re poor and you don’t have much free time because you take all the hours you can get to make ends meet. instead of cooking you have to eat shitty banquet and michelinas meals because delivery and takeout are too expensive. and the more tired you get, the more exhausted, the more shitty food you consume just to try to keep going.

and you probably don’t have good healthcare!

you’re stressed, you’re eating poorly, your body hurts from all the work and you’re too poor to pay for medical help, things like car repair fall by the wayside in order to provide, you’re sad, you start drinking to cope, etc

this is the cycle poor people are fucking trapped in. this is why the minimum wage is a fucking failure to all impoverished people in america.

this is the toll “just being frugal” takes on poor people after living for decades like that. adddiction, mental illness, lawbreaking – these things are associated with low class and poor people because it’s what happens to us and what we resort to when the system fails us.

There are so many fucks in the notes saying “its minimum wage, youre not suppose to live off of it !!!!!” … “thats why you climb the corporate ladder!!!” Minimum wage jobs are most people’s ONLY option, where there is no fuckin “ladder”.

Not to mention – yes, you are, in fact, supposed to be able to live off it. That’s. The. POINT. This is what FDR had to say when he implemented minimum wage in this country as a thing:

“…

It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By “business” I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.” – Source

The idea behind minimum wage is that you are supposed, by definition, to be able to work full-time and support your family on what you make by doing so. You’re supposed to be able to live in relative comfort from that wage – not subsist, in poor health, constantly exhausted, working your way toward a nervous breakdown from the stress of trying, day by day by agonizing day, to make ends just barely meet. If a minimum wage job is your only option, that shouldn’t mean that you’re living in conditions that most rich people wouldn’t tolerate for a dog, let alone themselves.