What the hell?! (Part 1)

I want to know how the government expects its citizens to live off of minimum wage.

In this post I will break down a few States/Provinces in The United States and Canada’s minimum wages and the cost of living in each place. I base the cost of living on the average rent in those places. Let's face it if you can’t pay the basic rent – then you are homeless.

Let’s start with my home State. Ohio’s minimum wage is $7.25 - $7.30. See the link and it will quickly break it down for you. At that rate (if you actually find a job that will give you 40 hours a week) you will gross $229.00 a week. That is not counting taxes withheld from you. That is not counting missed days due to illness, or missed days due to your children being ill or missed days due to Doctors appointments for yourself or children.

Let’s base this on a single person without children. One would gross $916.00 a month. You may be able to find a rental property (see this link) for $400 a month. 1 bedroom.

It’s time for us to do basic Math: $916.00 - $400 = $516.00. Now your rent is paid. Time to pay your basic utilities - which are water, heat and electric. You have to eat too! Plus, you need gas to get back and forth to your job, not to mention your toilet paper, shampoo, conditioner, soap, etc. I do not have all the numbers for the cost of utilites but use your common sense and you will realize people can not live off of mininum wage in Ohio! Some may think: can I get any help from the government such as ‘welfare’ to help with the cost of food? Since we are basing this on a single person – hell no! If we base this on a family of 3. Two Adults working with 1 child, both adults making minimum wage, again no. They will "make too much" to qualify. Which, I agree with that – those programs are in place for people that can not find a job. But, with that said something needs to change.


1)The cost of living needs to decrease

Or

2)The minimum wage needs to increase (without the cost of living increasing.)

As I am complaining about the State of Ohio. I can say that I do know Green County, Ohio does help the 'poor families' and I applaud them for it. They help train them for interview, etc. etc. But, the government needs to put a program in place to assist the working poor. The ones that do get off their asses everyday and flip hamburgers to only gross $916.00 a month.

If they DO have programs that assist these people. Then, you are doing a LOUSY job of promoting these programs. Maybe you need to spend more on letting your residents know they are not alone. Something needs to change, and quickly.

I know there has to be people out there reading this and they are thinking: "why didn't this individual" go to college? Well - this individual was raised in that family of 3 I mentioned. They couldn't afford paying school fees, which was a constant embarrassment - not to mention the embarrassment of not having school supplies, clean clothes, soap. They would go to school hungry, etc. Our individual dropped out of High School ...

I planned on breaking down a few locations in this post but, I wasn't aware it was going to take this much time. So, I will post a few with the same subject just different locations.

Until next time----


Kel ... out ...


lol