Honestly no minimum wage? Even if you could get a full time job at the current minimum wage that is 17,748 a year. $340 a week. For food, for housing, for utilities, for clothing and for medical care, for you, for those that depend on you!
Some republicans like Michele Bachmann support a removal of the minimum wage from the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Click the link to jump to the point I'm refering to but feel free to watch the whole thing and the ignorance in play.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q3a0udOqhc#t=1m43s
According to her logic the solution to world hunger would be to take the minimal amount of support given now and just spread it even thinner. The real scary bit is where she says "we need to tamp that down so that the American people can keep more of what they make"
Lets look at this statement. Some might say she's advocating for a smaller government, which she is, and that we shouldn't take from the poor. But look here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaGJP0G-hu0#t=3m07s
(feel free to view the whole video. The question was about how to address the issues where some corporations don't pay taxes yet she spins it) She also tried to make it seem like 1 persons entire job was to write just 14 words in the tax regulations. I'm sure the person she talked to had more responsibility then to just answer her question about a 14 word passage, but I digress.
She thinks that $17,748, and even less, is enough for not only 1 person to live on but often an entire family and that the government should be able to take even more money from these people.
What she really means by "American people can keep more of what they make" is "Business owners should be able to keep as much as they can and the workers should be happy with what they get and the government shouldn't be able to do anything about it."
While I don't think the tax system is perfect I don't think the problem is at the low end of the wage earners. Raising the tax rates for high income earners to what they paid during the Reagan administration would raise from 35-70 billion dollars a year. Taxing the almost half of American's that already live below the poverty line by 50% would raise about the same amount of money.
So the Republican/Tea party's solution is that instead of taxing the top 2% of earners, to what they would have been paying during the "golden era" that the republicans and tea party are always saying they want to get back to, We should take half of the income from the people that can least afford it.
Right now in the USA the top 1% of the income earners control almost 25% of the wealth, the top 10% almost 50%. In the last 30 years 80% of the raises in income have gone to that top 1%. The trickle down method hasn't worked. The rich get richer and the poor and middle class get poorer. What is really bad is that the top 10% of the country has much of the "middle class" convinced that taxing the rich is bad.
The bottom 50% house holds only control 2.5% of the income of our nation. 15.1% of the USA live below the poverty line and among African Americans and Hispanic Americans the rate is over 26%. The "middle class" which in theory should be the largest group control less then 50% of the income and that figure is getting smaller. Sure some of them are climbing into the bracket of those that control the 50%or more of the wealth. But what is happening is that the top 10% are controlling a higher percentage of the wealth. So you'll soon get 10% of the population controlling 60% of the wealth and 50% of the population controlling 1.25%! How is that fair?
We aren't even talking about raising the income tax of the top 10%. Just the top 2% and not to any rediculous rate but just restoring it to the rate that was in place during the Reagan administration.
So tell me, are you "middle class"? Do you think that it is more fair to tax a family of 4 that makes less then $22,350 a year by 50% and that it is unfair to remove the tax cuts that the top 2% income earners get restoring them to what they paid in the early 80s? Remember the higher taxes the poor people get hit with will effect you. They'll effect where you want to be. Yet the republican party has so many of middle class convinced that "class warefare" is being waged against the rich. Is it unreasonable to have someone that earns $5,000,000 a year pay even the same rate of tax as a household that earns just $50,000 a year.
I can tell you from personal experience that in the late 80's when I was in high school with 3 part time jobs, one of which was working for an accountant, that I saw people that made hundreds of thousands of dollars a year that paid less taxes then I did as a 17 year old high school student working those 3 part time jobs. Tell me...what class is the "Class warfare" actually being waged against?
I see what many Republicans and Tea Party leader think the problem is. The poor make to much! They should be paid less and taxed more!
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