Quote:
Originally Posted by brownbagg
but there is no such thing as a "Living wage" that is a liberal mindset invented word to get something for free. some people thing is a new house, new gas guzzler truck, wife stay at home, retirement, college education for kid. why other believe its rent heat and food.
so if somebody was getting a living wages then they would want more living wage for doing nothing. what a living wage, its easy, get a education.
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Well MIT wouldn't agree with you that there is no such thing as a "Living Wage". I get what you are saying, but I don't agree. There is no shortage of people that don't know how to live within their means - but they come from every economic class, contrary to what most republican's think it's not a problem inherent to low income individuals.
Yes, most of my generation have been keenly aware ever since elementary school, that education is pertinent to a better quality of life. So we went to college.
Millennials are the most educated generation to date, and yet the worst paid generation to date, mostly because we had the fortune of graduating in the middle of a recession that left few opportunities to pay off students loans that are increasingly becoming more necessary by the year, for anyone pursing higher education.
Partly because of advancements in technology, there is now a need for a college degree to do a job that in the past did not require a college degree, meanwhile the pay for these jobs has not risen consistently with the cost of living. So you're taking out loans to get a degree for a job that hopefully, one day, will pay you well, but in the meantime you're probably going to need to try to supplement income to pay off the average of $28k in debt - or live at home with mom and dad for a while.
And yes, people my age are fully aware that going to school for a worthless degree, like an arts history major, is on par or worse than not going to college at all. We've figured that out by now, you've told us enough.
As I said before, we can't all just go to school for the top paying jobs. We need teachers, bus drivers, and medical coders. Someone, more qualified than young single teenagers tend to be, have to fill these middle class positions. When you take into account the cost of healthcare, childcare, and the increasing need for households to be dual income households - a problem starts to arise for individuals in these middle class careers. Even in ideal circumstances, and in all reality life is hardly ever ideal, it becomes difficult to save and plan for the future. Slowly the middle class starts to disappears.
This isn't a complaint this is simply the state of things, so I will say that even as the lower class has grown over the years, so has the upper class. That means that while some middle class households are failing, some are succeeding... but what's important here to the debate on income inequality - is that in spite of that success, and furthermore to illustrate it - the middle class is
still disappearing. The divide between rich and poor grows bigger every year.
The middle class is vital to the economy. We need people to do these jobs, not only because they are jobs that are simply still needed, but because we need a middle class, and we need to pay them more than enough to just "get by" - we need to pay them a living wage so that they have enough to invest back into the economy.
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