Let's see, the COL raises for SSI recipients is approx. 1.25% a year,
if they get one!

My, how things would change.

Let's see, maybe SSI recipients who work part-time would get to
keep all their wages and still receive benefits.

Nah---

See the Just in case node. I started a petition to try and show how disgusted people are about this. I hope you will read and sign it. Even if we can't get it just the way it says in the petition, it will at least show our disgust. Best wishes!!!

http://www.webpetitions.com/cgi-bin/print_petition.cgi?99500686

I may have to try and reword it because as pointed out, Congress voted a while back that they get a cost of living increase, unless they vote otherwise.

John, if we just give the Repubs a chance and lower all our wages to $1/hour great wealth will trickle down from above.

Damned nice line too: “Corporations are NOT the only legitimate form of organization.” It’s a shame the electorate will only start to catch on after being fleeced of a decades worth of good wages and descent prices.

We need BOTH to bring low wage workers out of poverty. A raise in the minimum wage, coupled with the Earned Income Tax Credit would help immensely. How can an earned income tax credit help if you don't hardly earn any income. Clinton used a raise in the minimum wage and the earned income tax credit to help the working poor way back when, but it has long been erased. So to answer your question, The Earned Income Tax Credit can be used, but right now without the minimum wage hike it does little good. We need to quit making excuses for greedy business owners to pay slave wages. Minimum wage must go up, and when we win in 06, as Kennedy said, it will.

right off the bat is that the credit would come once a year,
when the worker would file his/her tax return.

A livable wage would be paid to the worker every month he/she works.

David do you have any real actual facts to back up those figures? I doubt that your libertarian views are going sit well here, but if you can get us some facts that are not biased by politics we will be glad to give them our attention.

This is the part that really gives you away every time.

students and spouses who want more walking around money.

I am btw a small business owner, in fair disclosure.

"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag, carrying a cross." ~ Sinclair Lewis

In a time of deception telling the truth is a revolutionary act. ~ George Orwell

Or perhaps struggling businesses should die.

Might you worship at the alter of a “businessman” who pays a dollar an hour to wipe peoples asses as they come out of the commode?

I would think not.

I agree that there ARE jobs and age groups for which debates on many issues become a grey area, but for the majority of professions on which a civilization depends there is only one goal: getting people to take the least amount possible for their labors.

Unfortunately of late, people have become enamored with only one half of that equation. In America however, the other half matters: getting top tiers to make as little as possible while still going ahead with their endeavors.

If you are only arguing details we may disagree. If you are arguing against a major shift in who gets paid what for what then we really need to battle it out.

And by the way, on a level playing field the working poor do not need help. They can get what they want by simply refusing the salaries they are offered. There is enough fat on upper tiers these days for them to begrudgingly pay the higher price for lower tier labor rather than doing without it.

Old Money, the hysteresis of moderate money, the need to just get by, and the political hand grenades thrown by the Right to break up such groups has been enough to stop any synchronized action from occurring of late. But it’s brewing, and will likely show itself at the polls as the synchronized action of a hundred million people is difficult in any other way.

For those states and communities that have increased the minimum wage above the federal level, there has been no loss of jobs and there has actually been an increase in business activity. Most households where both spouses work, it is because they have to, to make ends meet, not to make some pin money.

How many Americans earn minimum wage, or about $19,000 per year full-time? About 54 million Americans earn between the minimum wage and twice the minimum wage, or about $38,000 per year full-time.

Over two-thirds of those working for minimum wage do not live in poverty.

Can you provide links or evidence to support this spurious suggestion? Can you live on $5.15 an hour and NOT live in poverty in today's world?

This is slave labor with just enough meat attached to the bone for predatory capitalists to justify exploiting those that are less fortune or vunerable in order to fill their already overflowing coffers with the money off the broken backs, boiling blood and pouring sweat of 13% of our population. That same 13% that our citizens of the wealthiest country in the world.

"Give us your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses..." so we can enslave them over here instead of you enslaving them over there!

I guess "be the brother's keeper" is not in your play book?

"Its time to replace fear with hope. This is the crucial message that America must begin to hear and believe in again. For hope is the mortal enemy of fear; and fear cannot succeed in the solidarity of inspired hope."

"We?" "Slogans?" It is you neoconservative buttheads who invent the slogans, and skew the facts. The entire concept of a minimum wage was to combat the sweat shops and child-labor parlors. Without a minimum wage, many employers would return to those practices.

People like you would have employers return to the $1.00 per day wages prevalent at the turn of the century. Please take your Libertarian anti-American nonsense somewhere else.

quite far enough. Most employers today totally fail to raise rages from the minimum wage level. Under this Bush administration, the situation has gotten even worse.

Fed. minimum wage: $5.15/hr x 40 x 4.3=$885.80 gross monthly wage.

Oregon minimum wage: $7.50/hr x 40 x 4.3=$1290.00.

That is a difference in gross wages of $404.20 per month for these workers.

You say that doesn't make a difference? What planet do you live on? If you would quit hiding in your office and get out in the world and look around, you would see many people working for the present minimum wage. Mostly in states filled with neo-fascists and libertarians. Thinking states have gone ahead and raised their minimum wages because there was a need to do so.

In a time of massive layoffs and downsizings, many formerly well-paid workers are now at the mercy of the minimum wage of $5.15/hr. They cannot live on that; they cannot support their families on that wage, and there are no jobs available to help them regain their previous level of compensation. Their lives and those of their families are in chaos.

Walk around money? Wages paid to housewives and teenagers are more than ever before...going to the support of their families. That you don't know that shows your abyssmal ignorance.

We have a country with well-educated and trained people working for minimum wages right now. Many of these employees do not even get a full 40 hour work week...but are held to 25 hours or so. There are no benefits accompanying these jobs.

Yet your bottom line attitude is screw the workers. The poor employers are having such a tough time. Try living on minimum wages in most states...it just plain can't be done.

A pox on your libertarian house.

A mind once expanded can never return to its original dimensions.

Anne Hathaway: 1556-1623

The greatest derangement of the mind is to believe in something because one wishes it to be so.

Louis Pasteur