Every once in a while you when the minimum wage topic comes up you will hear people saying something to the effect of: "minimum wage isn't enough to feed a family"
Which is true but I hold the radical idea that maybe people shouldn't have kids until they have secured the economic means to properly support them. Maybe it would be good if this were the cultural norm. Oh wait that's right as far as I know most people who aren't poor do hold this as a cultural norm.
So to what extent do you think families poverty can be blamed on the parents making decisions that place huge drains on their time and money?
Whenever I think about how a lefty would respond to this I always remember Nuclearnight on youtube emotionally attacking someone for blaming the victim, do you think this type of response has any substance? Because I feel it completely avoids the issue.
Being that poverty is a 100% subjective term, it is 100% cultural.
Having babies too early is a bad investment decision much like spending too much on credit cards. If families who have kids too early should be bailed out, then why not bail out everyone who makes a bad decision?
As for "blaming the victim" who exactly is the purpotrator here? The commonly held idea it is the market's fault for not paying them well enough is kinda silly. Like blaming the failure of a big company on the customers for not buying enough of their product. While it's technically accurate it doesn't make any sense to say what the market does in either case is "wrong."
Jenifer Zeigler said: The best way to reduce the poverty rate is to convince people to avoid poverty in the first place by finishing school, delaying parenthood, and getting a job (any job). In the United States, high school dropouts are roughly three times more likely to end up in poverty than are those who complete at least a high school education. A common reason why teens drop out of high school is out-of-wedlock births. Teenage pregnancy initiates a single mother into a life of dependency that is difficult to overcome, especially if she goes on to have additional children. Over half of welfare money is spent on families that began with a teen birth.
Getting a job as a solution to poverty may seem like common sense. Granted, not every job pays a wage that will catapult a family into the middle class. However, every job provides job experience, and that leads to a better job. Maybe today's low-wage, service industry employee is not on a track for management. But he is showing that he is a reliable worker who can learn and perform duties, something a future employer will value.
"Being that poverty is a 100% subjective term, it is 100% cultural."
...Yeah I realize 70 something percent of people "in poverty" in the United States own an automobile. This isn't really about the demarcation of poverty. So for those who are critical of colloquial wording, to what extent would being materially relatively less wealthy as determined by the monetary values of ones assets be caused by ones culture.
"Having babies too early is a bad investment decision much like spending too much on credit cards. If families who have kids too early should be bailed out, then why not bail out everyone who makes a bad decision?
As for "blaming the victim" who exactly is the purpotrator here? The commonly held idea it is the market's fault for not paying them well enough is kinda silly. Like blaming the failure of a big company on the customers for not buying enough of their product. While it's technically accurate it doesn't make any sense to say what the market does in either case is "wrong.""
Yeah, don't you kind of find it amazing that the left has managed to make certain groups or actions virtually immune to criticism... The more they do this the more anti Politically correct I feel inclined to become, not out of racism but simply by pushing my view that everything should be scrutinized at least everything that is under one's control so it has an element of stoicism in it. To me this cultural tolerance paradigm seems to have devolved into an anti scrutiny paradigm.
Poverty creates an impoverished culture. With it comes an impoverished attitude. It's the reason why poorer immigrants become very successful while people who's families have lived in poorer neighborhoods don't do as well.
Freedom has always been the only route to progress.
This post completely ignores the fact that no one, absolutely no one, earning a minimum wage has a family, and it would be virtually impossible for such a person to get an accomodation for him and his wife and meet the needs of pregnancy from any earning below the current minimum wage before implementation. The minimum wage is fixed at what is estimated to be the requirement for a family of four, but only because the family is expected to come after and not before.
People earning minimum wage are normally young children, teenagers, young adults, the disabled, the few elderly, and all less productive members of society who don't get jobs at the same wage rates as most do.
Most of those are already supported by other sources of income and by family. Under minimum wage laws, it is only them who lose out, and they still have family support. Often, the more productive members move downwards and occupy those positions, and there could often be labour shortages for more important and demanding jobs available at the same rates.
None of these facts are in dispute by either party - be it those legislators who implement it, and those who are against it.
What we need to understand is that although today's progressive social democracy implements policies on some claims of social justice and some claims of efficiency, they don't really do these things on such utilitarian grounds. We must understand their perspective first on their own terms - they implement minimum wage laws and other such labour laws out of the view of creating a "good society". Everything else was secondary. Such things are basically a substitute religion, on ideas of empowerment and wanting the young to be able to move out and live independently, under support guaranteed by state. It is about the "feel-good" factor of wanting to see even janitors and burger flippers live a high standard of living, even though such jobs are occupied temporarily and vacated just as quickly.
Such a substitute religion is only the outcome of late 19th century purging of the church, which left many Europeans wanting some kind of a collective societal moral authority of ecclessiastical control, as such was aggravated by postwar sense of alienation.