Why Does The DFL Hate Poor Urban Single Mothers?

I saw this idea in “Think” “Progress”…:

Five state lawmakers in Minnesota have decided to take on the “Minimum Wage Challenge” and live off of a typical budget for a worker who makes the federal minimum wage of $7.25.

…and I thought “I loved that skit the first time I saw a bunch of upper-middle-class liberals pretend to be poor to advance their narrative the first time I saw it – when Barbara Ehrenreich did it!”

Back during the high times of the early 2000’s, Democrats assuaged their self-righteousness about poverty by reading Ehrenreich’s Nickeled And Dimed.  Ehrenreich – an upper-middle-class congenital “progressive” who has lived her life by her parents’ dicta “never cross a picket line and never vote Republican” – made a great show of pretending to live as a minimum wage worker in various parts of the country.

It was BS, of course.  Ehrenreich approached minimum wage life the way you might expect someone who’d never had to do it.

And I wouldn’t expect much better from the DFLers that’ll be doing this iteration of the stunt:

Rep. Frank Hornstein (D) told CBS Minnesota that it made him take more notice of his costs. “An orange juice was $1.79. That’s not something that I would normally notice,” he said after getting breakfast from McDonald’s Dollar Menu. “Making the decision to take the bus today versus taking the car will save me a little money for dinner. For food,” he added.

Another lawmaker who lives far from the capitol, Rep. Shannon Savick (D), said, “I can live on what they set for food. I don’t eat a lot,” but she worried about transportation. Where she lives, “if you don’t have a car, you don’t go anywhere, because there is no public transportation. Driving will cost more than what they’re allowing me.” The other three participants are Democratic Reps. Karen Clark, John Lesch, Jason Metsa.

And what exactly will these legislators be trying to do?

The state has one of the lowest minimum wages in the country at $6.15 an hour, which means it gets trumped by the federal wage. A worker who puts in 40 hours a week at that level will earn just $290 before taxes. The challenge limits the lawmakers to $5 a day for food and $9 for transportation.

Meaning $210 a week (before taxes) on…what?

It’s not an idle question.  When you’re poor – and I spent a good chunk of my 20s and early 30s as “low income”, and I’m happy to say I’m forgetting some of the finer points of that lifestyle – you either budget ruthlessly to your circumstances, or you flounder.  Or, often enough, both.

But this stunt seems to assume that the minimum wage earners are heads of households.  Not teenagers living in Eden Prairie and working at Boston Market for pin money.

But minimum wage workers are not, as a rule, adult heads of households – even their own.

This table – from Heritage – shows the demographics of minimum wage workers as of 2012:

Check out the average income line:  most minimum wage earners, even those older than 25, are parts of households with average incomes averaging $26 an hour (including, it must be said, all of the DFLers in the stunt – who, presumably, won’t be eschewing their spouses’ incomes during the stunt).

Upshot?  They are a third as likely to live in poverty as they are to live in a household over 150% of the poverty line.

Most – even the older ones – work part-time, and they are 3-4 times as  likely as the general public not to have finished high school yet.

So the push to hike the minimum wage will  benefit the Dairy Queen worker in Maple Grove – who at best will get a 40% raise, and at worst will spend more time playing “Grand Theft Auto” at home while bitching to their friends about getting laid off.

It’ll directly harm the stereotype they claim they’re trying to help – the urban single parent who never finished high school because they were busy raising kids, and is part of that minority of minimum wage workers who don’t actually have a functional support system, a family to fall back on (like the legislators all do, even during the course of their weaselly little stunt).

 

36 thoughts on “Why Does The DFL Hate Poor Urban Single Mothers?

  1. $1.79 for a Mcs orange juice? You can get a half gallon for $2.50 at Rainbow Foods. That’s fresh squeezed. Get concentrate for much less. Speaking of that, are they going on Saturday and Wednesdays to get in on double coupon day? Are they buying private labels? If they are making minimum wage and can’t live off that, you would think they would pick up a second job. As an adult, I found myself a little down on my luck once, so worked 2 jobs, 65-70 hours a week total. I didn’t take food stamps, but it sure seems easy to get those now. Are these DFLers figuring that in?

  2. I believe that this brilliant idea came from none other than racist Ryan Winkler. Not sure on this, but I was told that he came from a family that wasn’t exactly living check to check.

    This “experiment” is like the suburban kids that stay outside for one night, usually on one that is a little bit below freezing, to put themselves in the shoes of a homeless person. Of course, the lame stream propaganda spewing media always covers these events, usually pointing out that these kids have plenty of hot chocolate with them in their cardboard boxes.

  3. Introduce higher minimum wage, get people laid off, promise to steal, sorry redistribute, money from people who are still working to those laid off people who will vote liberat to continue their reliance on the goobernment. Lather, rinse, repeat…

  4. There is a good reason Heritage is known colloquially as the buy-to-lie-shop.
    “But this stunt seems to assume that the minimum wage earners are heads of households. Not teenagers living in Eden Prairie and working at Boston Market for pin money.

    But minimum wage workers are not, as a rule, adult heads of households – even their own.”

    Perhaps, since more reliable national, and more state specific information IS available, you should use that info instead of the right wing propaganda and disnformation B.S.

    There is this, for example, from the recently released Department of Labor and Industry in MN.

    http://www.dli.mn.gov/RS/MinWageReport.asp

    Not only are 40% of adults (over 24) working for minimum wage — and therefore presumably head of households or contributing equally to the family income – there are plenty of adults UNDER age 24 who are self-supporting.

    Further, not every kid who is working is doing so for ‘pin money’ as you put it; given the number of those who are working minimum wage and living in poverty, you should assume that even those who are under age 18 may be contributing to the family income, not just using it as discretionary income.

    Poor conservatives, reality and facts just don’t seem to support your positions. Sad really.

  5. “There is a good reason Heritage is known colloquially as the buy-to-lie-shop…”

    …by absolutely nobody whose opinion deserves to be listened to.

  6. To heck with orange juice, has anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and seen what they charge for arugula?

    .

  7. On that teens working thing, btw — I don’t know about you (although I seem to recall you worked towards college as a teen as well), but I was working towards my college expenses when I was in high school and after. Raising the minimum wage helps kids to save for college and to stay in school, rather than having to choose between school and working.

    And then of course there are the teen parents, who ARE despite their age raising families. Here was a stat, a little old, but still significant, from the MN Dept. of Health: “Each day in Minnesota in 2007, approximately 14 women aged 19 years and younger gave birth. ”

    So either we pay people for the job they do, or we pay them by age, gender, and fertility.

    I think we agreed as a society a long time ago that we pay people for the job they do.

    Good on the Dems for at least giving it a go to understand what resources other people have or don’t have.

    Republicans just take food out of the mouth of children and old people, and leave poor people to get sick and die without care. Not so family values, except for worthless lip service.

  8. Republicans just take food out of the mouth of children and old people, and leave poor people to get sick and die without care. Not so family values, except for worthless lip service.

    I did that just the other day. And then I twirled my Snidely Whiplash mustache and cackled maniacally. Then I got on the conference call with Richard Mellon Scaife, the Koch Brothers and Auric Goldfinger and planned my next move, which involves manipulating the wool market and. . . oh, I’ve said too much.

  9. Mr. D, you lucky dog. I wanted to, but I was too busy grinding women under my iron heel at work. Then, I had to go oppress some minorities and you know long that takes! I’m glad at least some of us got a chance to live a little.
    .

  10. Nate, sorry to hear that. I’ll have to have you over for drinks some day at my secret lair. I’ve lately been enjoying a great new Republican cocktail that’s made with 20-year old Scotch mixed with the tears of Appalachian miners.

  11. Republicans just take food out of the mouth of children and old people

    …like by destroying lower-income jobs with idiotic minimum wage hikes that benefit suburban middle class teens and trade unions.

    Oh wait.

  12. I don’t know about you (although I seem to recall you worked towards college as a teen as well)

    Yep. Started at $2.10 an hour – 90 cents below the minimum at the time – working at a candy and tobacco warehouse. Then got $2.90 – minimum – at my first radio gig, because that’s what it was worth until I learned the job. Got a 10 cent raise after a month, when I showed I could show up on time, work the equipment, and read and write news. That New Years (1980) when the minimum went up to $3.10, I was hoping I’d at least go up to $3.20. My boss jacked me up to $3.50. It was one of the proudest days of my life; it was tangible proof that I HAD learned a marketable skill.

    But until I did, the work I did was worth what Bob Richardson was able to pay for it. And I’m glad it was worth $2,90 that first month or so.

  13. Raising the minimum wage helps kids to save for college and to stay in school, rather than having to choose between school and working.

    That’s great. I hope all the people thrown out of work are happy for the kids who go to college.

  14. And then of course there are the teen parents, who ARE despite their age raising families. Here was a stat, a little old, but still significant, from the MN Dept. of Health: “Each day in Minnesota in 2007, approximately 14 women aged 19 years and younger gave birth. ”

    OK…?

    So small business is supposed to pay for the fact that these young women are having babies rather than learning job skills?

    Here’s a solution; keep your pants on (or use a condom) and learn a job skill rather than trying to play house.

  15. So either we pay people for the job they do, or we pay them by age, gender, and fertility.

    I think we agreed as a society a long time ago that we pay people for the job they do.

    Right, but I don’t think that phrase means what you think it means.

    If “the job they do” is one that requires little skill, and a large pool of people who can do it just as well, and a labor pool that offers employers high risks (low-skill workers are frequently terribly unreliable), why does it follow that employers should be forced to pay more for it?

  16. Good on the Dems for at least giving it a go to understand what resources other people have or don’t have.

    Baked wind. They’re tourists, play-acting is support of a damaging and stupid narrative.

    As someone who once had to try to stretch less than $12K a year among four or five people, I feel nothing but contempt for these legislators.

  17. “There is a good reason Heritage is known colloquially as the buy-to-lie-shop.”
    Another slander. The Brookings Institution is the liberal opposite of the Heritage Foundation (similar budgets, center-left rather than center right).
    You never hear conservatives slander Brookings the way DG slandered Heritage. It’s a think tank, fight them in the marketplace of ideas.
    Oh well, more seething hatred for Americans by someone on the Left. get used to it, you are going to see a lot more of it in the future. They never, ever, have to pay the price for their hate.

  18. Funny, Doggy, but the Director of the CBO, a DEMOCRAT and an employee of Herr Obama, stated more than once that raising the minimum wage would cost at least 1 million jobs. But, you ignorant liberats will try to spin it to make your economically illiterate heroes sound the second coming. By the way, your drug addled, absent minded trust fund governor’s higher taxes on the rich, affected the people that Democrats ALWAYS hit the hardest- the middle class! Several of my co-workers discovered that they made less this year, but are paying more in taxes. Needless to say, they won’t be voting Dumb Freaking Liberat in future elections, so you better get your precinct buddies out the nearest cemetery or find a few newly released felons to register as replacement voters. You’ll need 11 names!

  19. Once again DG chimes in so that the opposite opinion is heard (blog comment sections are great!) then destroyed …….. I swear she’s (they are?) a conservative trying to make all “progressives” look crazy. What does “…… giving it a go to understand what resources other people have or don’t have.” mean ?? Is she (they?) saying Democrats are for the minimum wage to find out how much ‘extra’ money employers have laying around ? Embarrassing that an adult would think that way …..

  20. “There is a good reason Heritage is known colloquially as the buy-to-lie-shop…”
    Seems like the last time Heritage was prominent in the news (October?) was when Obamacare hit like a sack of turds. In their desperation to point away from the impending (and potentially criminally fraudulent) catastrophe, it was noted by the thoughtful that Heritage created the blueprint or the framework or the etch-a-sketches that became Obamacare. Heritage, kind of like the Jooo’s: is there anything they can’t be held responsible for?

  21. If you aggregate Paul Krugman’s comments on the minimum wage, he believes there’s a disemployment effect but that we should do it anyway. He just doesn’t say those things together because he’s a team player. I’m less interested in how they justify it and more in what the public thinks since that’s what makes or breaks laws. And most non-economist supporters of the minimum wage make no trade-off. It’s a free lunch as far as they’re concerned. If the public knew there was a trade-off, support would plummet, Democrats would stop pushing it, economists would stop making excuses for it, and the world would be a better place.

  22. DG- “Each day in Minn. in 2007 approximately 14 women aged 19 or younger gave birth.” Instead of arguing over how much to pay them, don’t you think the more pertinent question would be: why are you having children if you can’t afford them?

  23. If the public knew there was a trade-off, support would plummet, Democrats would stop pushing it, economists would stop making excuses for it, and the world would be a better place.

    Kumbaya, baby.

  24. I’m waiting for a group of Democrat legislators to get together and open a small business and try to survive while living under the regulations they passed and paying “livable” wages … or better yet, with union labor!

  25. Jimf wrote: “don’t you think the more pertinent question would be: why are you having children if you can’t afford them?”
    Or where’s the father? Or, better, where is his wallet?
    The hidden history of marriage is that before the industrial revolution (or Bonaparte, if you prefer) it was a parish affair. When you were born you were registered at your parish. The parish — meaning your neighbors — was supposed to take care of you. If a girl in your parish married and had a child, the father was responsible for providing for wife & child. If a girl had a child with no husband, the parish had to support both. Not good when many parish fold were near starvation themselves. It meant that they had less resources to feed their own kind.
    Bearing or fathering a child out of wedlock without the resources to support the child is seen today as being irresponsible. It should instead be seen as an act of selfishness. “Take some of the food from your child’s mouth and give it to mine because I got drunk and screwed this waitress at the bar”.

  26. “Republicans just take food out of the mouth of children and old people…”

    I’m pretty sure it is Democrats running the schools that are taking kids lunches away and throwing them in the garbage!

  27. Before the advent of the “New Left” in the 60’s, single mothers meant widows. Today, DG and her ilk don’t give one another the courtesy of a brief crotch sniff before breeding.

    They’ve brought untermenschen chic to the mainstream.

  28. How come single fathers are not considered in the single mother issue?

    All of the out-of-wedlock kids cannot be from some hit and run, one night stand. Aside from being held financially accountable for their part of the situation, those fathers who do stay in the child’s and mothers’ lives are just as deserving of support as the mother.

    Obviously, sexual assault, under-age victimization, and other non-consensual situations are the true victims in the unwed, underage parental argument.

  29. Speaking of being paid to lie, Dog Gone’s link demonstrates that, contrary to her lying assertion, only 5.2% of Minnesotans are currently working for minimum wage, not 40% of adults. Criminy, DG, can’t you even READ? The report you cite more or less corroborates the Heritage report.

    And again, let’s have answer to the question; if your work is worth less than $10.10 per hour (and you don’t belong to a government union), what happens when the minimum wage is raised to that level?

    Answer; like 32% of teens in Minneapolis, you find yourself UNEMPLOYED with a minimum wage of ZERO. Listening to the left, you would think money grew on trees or something.

  30. Listening to the left, you would think money grew on trees or something.

    Apparently, they think that’s the same place where unwed mothers get their babies.

  31. Right on, NW, and thanks, Mitch. The embarrassing part is that I didn’t even have to go past page 3 to figure out that her “facts” needed to be picked up with a bag around my hand, so to speak.

    Of course, having worked in an outstate factory where the starting wage was a lot higher than minimum, but the workers were all too often “McDonald’s Grade”, helped my “bovine scat meter” peg pretty instantly at her claims.

  32. Dog Gone wrote:
    “Not only are 40% of adults (over 24) working for minimum wage — and therefore presumably head of households or contributing equally to the family income – there are plenty of adults UNDER age 24 who are self-supporting.”

    The report she linked to, http://www.dli.mn.gov/RS/MinWageReport.asp
    says:

    Age and gender
     About 111,000 hourly workers were 15 to 19
    years old. Among these, 25.7 percent earned
    $7.25 an hour or less, compared with 2.8
    percent of 25- to 54-year-olds and 2.1 percent
    of those 55 and older.

    This is why it does no good to engage DG. She is simply unable to evaluate the evidence before her eyes. She gets some crazy idea by wildly misinterpreting some source — like, say, 95% lesbians are left-handed — and it can take forever to get her to acknowledge a simple mistake in her reading or her math.

  33. “We maintain the principle that there can be no lasting prosperity if free competition exists in industry. Therefore, it is the business of government not only to legislate for a minimum annual wage and maximum working schedule to be observed by industry, but also to curtail individualism that, if necessary, factories shall be licensed and their output shall be limited.” – Charles Coughlin, NUSJ, 1936

    You’re in good company DG.

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