Changing Minimum Wage Into Living Wage When considering this complex process one will inevitability reach the problem of the poverty measure. Common sense dictates that minimum wage should at least let someone live above poverty, otherwise what’s the point. Okay, so there are some obvious points, it’s a way of sustaining a poor working class which is essential for a capitalistic society. But the argument here, is that government and society should be responsible for providing at least a living wage to the workers that fuel capitalism. This all important poverty measure was created in the 1960s by an economic statistician called Millie Orshansky. She based this poverty measure off of two things, a family’s income and their resources. Income can be adjusted with inflation, but resources can not. When resources were thought of back then, it was primarily food (1/3 of a family’s expenditures were food in 1955). So, Orshansky took the 1955 food consumption survey and took 75 to 80 percent of the low-cost plan and multiplied that by 3 to make the estimate whole. So even by those standards it was 3/4’s of the lowest cost food plan, not average… lowest cost plan. So even in the 1960s it represented below a barely sustainable food plan. Fast forward… according to the 2009 US Census the average consumer spent…10.6 to 13.9 percent on their expenditures on food. Basically, there are expenditures now, that either did not exist or were not considered essential for living back in 1950. Lets be real 2012 is nothing like 1950, cell phones, computers, TV’s did not exist, only the wealthy had cars, and health insurance, clothing and housing have all grown into a larger portion of our budget since 1950. One of the biggest things is that the poverty measure needs to be updated, some work has been done to develop the Supplemental Income Poverty Measure, but there are still deficits. Next, historically minimum wage has NEVER been enough to raise a family out of poverty. Check the nice folks at Oregon, http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/anth484/minwage.html. Amazingly, the last time that minimum wage even got close to the poverty line was back in 1968, and if you calculate for inflation it would be $10.04 in the year of 2010, so technically the government is paying less now then it was forty years ago. What I’m purposing is that the Rhode Island government implement a living wage based on more updated and flexible poverty measures. Okay so lets examine the two biggest criticisms; 1) Businesses will hurt. Actually it’s been proven that when people have more money they spend more, and this actually increases business profits. There can also be a slight mark up in product cost to adjust for overhead expenditures. When taken into account this small markup is marginal compared to what economic benefits are stimulated. It’s also been proven that lower income individuals spend a lot more of their money on local goods, instead of the upper income individuals who typically invest their money in global goods and diversify. So, logically, more money will be fed back into the local economy, more so benefiting small businesses. The big businesses like Walmart or Mcdonalds can spread out the cost of raising their wages over the nation, this amount of money would equate to fractions of a percent of the company’s profits. Other beneficial factors, that research has proven, include more employee loyalty, which leads to less expenditures in rehiring (training, paperwork, processing, screening) and more efficient workers. (if you like your job and feel you have a steak in the company, you’ll probably work harder and better). 2) If wages increase the cost of everything else will increase. Wages are only one contributing factor to increased prices. Others include manufacturing, transportation, equipment, rent, advertising, business location, income demographic of the community, employee recruitment and training. Several of these aspects can be improved by technology (manufacturing, transportation, advertising) and bring about cost reduction to equalize the wage increase. Let’s take a case study of the fast food industry for a real simple example. There have been multiple studies done around the time of an increase in minimum wage across the nation. When wages were increased the cost of the product should logically increase. However, it has been proven that there was “little evidence of relative price increases in those establishments with larger mandated wage increases” (Katz & Krueger, 1992). There are also several other updated studies that show the same. For everybody that has the time there is a good Q&A about the economic and societal benefits of a living wage located on this website, http://www.universallivingwage.org/ under the facts and myths tab on the left hand side. Sources: Card, D., & Krueger, A. (1994). Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast-Food Industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The American Economic Review. 84:4. 772-793 Fremst, S. (2010). A Model Framework for Measuring Poverty and Basic Economic Security. Center for Economic and Policy Research. April 2010. 1-63 Katz, L., & Krueger, A. (1992). The Effect of the Minimum Wage on the Fast-Food Industry. Industrial and Labor Relations Review. 46:1. 6-21 Oregonstate. (2012). Minimum Wage History. Retrieved from http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/anth484/minwage.html Univerallivingwage. (2012). Universal Living Wage, Clearing the Air: Myths and Concerns. Retrieved from http://www.universallivingwage.org/ United States Census. (2012). Income, Expenditures, Poverty, & Wealth. Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/income_expenditures_poverty_wealth.html

Our Country, Our Liberty, Our Freedom, even our Daily Lives are being bought and sold in the hallways and back rooms of our Capital. Big Oil, Big Banks, Big Energy, Big Insurance, Foreign Interests and Super PACs, etc. Dare I say the 1% have in place master manipulators that literally buy our elected officials and their vote. Our Congress is being used as pawns in a fight over power and pure greed with zero regard for everyday hard working Americans.Saudi Arabia said they can pump all the oil we need and theres no real reason gas is four dollars a gallon.Big oil , Big banks are Speculating on oil futures playing the same ole games on Wall Street.putting the screws to almost everyone's budget.The list of issues and the deception for profit are many helped along with our bought and paid for do nothing Congress. Courtesy of Big Oil and Big Bank, etc., lobbyists and their underhanded robbing of American Citizens. Please sign this petition and spread the word.. Our United States Congress and other elected officials are not for sale any longer. We have to start somewhere.

The Constitution of the United States, Article 1 section 2, defines the composition of the House of Representatives. It states that the number of Representatives shall not EXCEED one for every thirty thousand people in each state with at least 1 representative from each state. There is no Maximum number of people that each representative shall be able to represent. In fact, that number has increased over the years as our population grew.

US should impose a tax on speculative financial transactions. Speculative interest makes up the majority of transactions in any financial market artificially inflating the price of hard assets (oil, houses, grain, minerals, materials, etc.) and having a negative impact on real economy. Also, speculation periodically causes asset prices to collapse creating havoc in real economy. A tax on speculation would create incentives for money to be invested in real economy generating more jobs and helping everybody in our society.

No more out of state tuitions! In Europe students go to school for free in countries that used to be at war with one another and our kids have to pay exorbitant fees to go from Texas to Oklahoma. Make it 1 country not 50!Its become a global economy and our students cant compete when they cant go to the school they like. We are falling behind. Please sign this petition to erase out of state tuitions in the US!

Ban extraordinary rendition and torture by our covert forces. Torture doesn't produce reliable information. It has a negative impact on how others view the US.

political advertising on tv and radio is annoying, and it is the major expense of political campaigns. in signing this petition call for a constitutional amendment to prohibit political campaigns of all kinds, including single issue initiatives, from advertising on tv and radio, thereby eliminating the need for vast amounts of money in politics and forcing citizens to read. keep our airwaves free of corporate and union selfishness. vote read.

The law only passed to disenfranchise democrats.

Medicare only allows those of 65 to enrole, a form of age descrimination. Uninsured Americans should be allowed to enroll in what is the best health care provider in the world, Medicare. Opening Medicare to those under 65 will increase the base of healthier individuals improving Medicare funding and the Medicare program.

Using volunteers to act as regulators for government agencies.

At this time, workers contribute to Social Security on their earned income up to $100,100.00. Once that income level is reached, nothing more goes into the fund. If the cap were eliminated, Social Security would be healthy infinitely. Someone pointed out this week that a star baseball player would play only one inning of one game to meet his obligation.

Enough, already. We get it. There are divisions. Let's find the common core.